A few random things for Sunday morning:

I thought of another pattern for the eventual-pattern-book last night as I was getting ready to go to sleep. Just to be safe, I wrote it down on the pad of paper I keep next to my bed* so I wouldn't forget it.

Except I probably wouldn't have, because it's an idea that pleases me immensely (it may even become the first one I work up, even before some of my earlier ideas) and it would be adaptable in a couple of other interesting ways.

(*I keep a pen and pad of paper there in case I wake up in the middle of the night with an inspiration, or, what is sadly more likely, the thought of "Oh, my gosh, I have to remember to do x tomorrow!")

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I'm reading a book by Robert Farrar Capon while I eat my meals. ("Food for Thought.") I bought it at the used book store because years ago, I read an essay of his (in the earlier incarnation of Eating Well). It was a holiday-time essay, and one of the things he said that made me cheer was to express the idea that we shouldn't be afraid of enjoying things - not be afraid of enjoying food, or the comforts that we have. Even though some religious traditions teach that things of this earth are evil. Even despite the old story about the Puritan father who dumped a cupful of water in his son's soup when that son expressed delight about the soup and said it was good.

Because, Capon said, God must like stuff. After all, God MADE stuff, as Capon's argument went. And God made an awful lot of stuff...

Capon's argument was that sometimes we go too far in the 'anti-hedonist' direction, especially these days, where any time you turn on the news or open up a health magazine, there's one more thing that poses an imminent threat.

Anyway. I don't agree as much with some of his premises in this book. He is writing (at least as far as I've gotten into the book) from the standpoint of one unexpectedly living alone, and how one copes with it.

Capon does NOT fall into one trap that many cookbook authors do, and I am thankful for that. That is the trap that the person eating alone is somehow an outcast, that it is THEIR FAULT that they are eating alone, and they jolly well should go out and seek some kind of company to eat with them (or, I presume, not eat at all).

Instead, Capon says: "The person who lives alone...is confronted instantly with the necessity of developing a healthy self-esteem. He needs to discipline himself , to develop a settled habit of thinking kindly of his own company. And for that, there is no better exercise than paying himself the compliment or regular, decently cooked meals, eated seated at a table, with a glass of wine and enough quiet time to think or dream...If we are not fit for solitude, we will never be anything but dangerous in company."

However, he loses me a bit when he goes on to talk about meal preparation. Because, you know? Sometimes I don't feel like cutting up chicken and vegetables and stirfrying them and trying to do the necessary mental math to make sure that the cooked rice and the hot tea and the stir-fry are all done at the same time.

I get the feeling that Capon would look a bit askance at many of my recent meals, which consist in large part of spinach salad. Because spinach salad is easy. You don't have to decide an hour in advance when you are going to be hungry, and maybe miscalculate, and have the food hot and ready before you have an appetite for it, or, almost worse, get terribly hungry before the food's done and either have to sit there gloomily watching the pot or succumb to eating crackers (and then spoiling your appetite).

And in the summer. In the summer, my appetite is so fickle. Some days I want to eat, others, I eat because I know I will be cranky and weak if I don't. So cooking just seems like an effort, lately, not to mention the fact that it heats up the kitchen.

I guess I'm saying...there's a balance. There's a balance between the McFood that Capon seems to assume most singles eat, and having to prepare something that will dirty every pot you own...I don't like the first option (for taste and for health), but the second exhausts me to even think about it these days.

So, I don't think there's necessarily anything so bad about washing up some greens, and mixing in some chickpeas, and adding a little dressing, and maybe making a bagel and cream cheese while you're at it...that's still taking care of yourself, is it not?

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It's ironic that I've been mentioning the "black dog" here lately.

I talked to my mother the other night. One of her cousins (one neither of us have met in-person; he's from the other side of the Ames family from the one I grew up knowing) is doing a family history of her mother's father's side of the family.

And it turns out, we are distantly* related to Winston Churchill.

Interesting, that.

(*Distantly, but not TOO distantly, if you know what I mean...go far enough back and I'm related to YOU, whoever you are. Go a little farther back and we're related to other mammals, and the birds. Go further back and it's the molds (no, seriously), and eventually every other living thing. Just a matter of perspective).

Oh, we are also related to Nixon and the Bushes and some other known name that she couldn't remember at the moment, as it turns out. And I had ancestors who came over on the Mayflower. (I suppose that makes me eligible to join some group that probably wouldn't really want me). But it's the Churchill relation that interests me. I really should read a biography of the man sometime.