Some oddball holidays

Last night was the monthly CWF meeting. (Which is also why I didn't do much after work, other than get my piano practice in...)

The lesson for the month had, as some of the sort-of discussion prompts, some unusual holidays. (The idea behind the lesson was building people up by celebrating small things with them - or, really more, I think, reassuring people that they matter*)

One of the holidays was October 15: National Grouch Day. The woman doing the lesson said she had to laugh - because that was her husband's birthday (And we all roared with laughter - we all know her husband and yes, he is kind of a curmudgeon and a grouch, but he's also a fairly likable person, or so I've found, and most of the "grouchiness" is in the service of doing what's right for students or for the church - I've served on committees with him, both at school and at church. And also, I suspect the curmudgeonliness is at least partly an act...he's not mean or anything, just kind of terse and prone to speak his mind)

Also, this month is National Grilled Cheese Month. Which makes me want to go and find an old-fashioned coffee shop or diner and have a grilled cheese. Sadly, those are hard to come by any more. And the last few times I ordered a grilled cheese "from out," one time they didn't tell me it was a "grilled cheese Florentine" and it came with a layer of cooked spinach on it...which would have been fine if that had been what I wanted, but I wasn't expecting it and didn't want it. And another place, I found out, didn't really grill it so much as grill the bread and slap the cheese on later. (And they put mayonnaise on the sandwich. Mayonnaise and cheese together just seems wrong to me...but then again, I eat pimiento cheese spread, which is sometimes made with mayonnaise. But that's different.)

For years and years, when I was a kid, grilled cheese was the fall-back choice at restaurants. For one thing, most of the places my parents took my brother and me out to were pretty basic, and they were unlikely to dude up a grilled cheese into something terrible. And for another - grilled cheese from a place with an old-fashioned flat-top grill is just better than what you make at home. (I've never succeeded in making a good "true" grilled cheese; if I want toasted bread and cheese I am much more likely to make an open-faced cheese sandwich under the broiler. Usually when I try to make a "real" grilled cheese, either I butter the bread too much and it gets soggy, or it burns, or something. As good a cook as I am with other things, I kind of fail at grilled cheese.)

I was kind of a picky eater as a kid, which is one reason why I went for grilled cheese: you could pretty much count on it to be uniformly good. (Which is why the "grilled cheese Florentine" and the one duded up with mayo were such disappointments). Two slices of white bread, some butter, a slice of American cheese or two...not that hard, and you knew what to expect.

I'm still a fairly picky eater. I'm less vocal about it now. (Because adults "don't" complain about food touching on a plate, or start to tear up over something not being served the "right way.") I didn't send back the "grilled cheese Florentine" (though I probably would have been within my rights to, as it did not mention spinach OR "florentine" on the menu) but I didn't eat much of it. And I still don't like food touching, or the juices from one food (like green beans) getting into another (like mashed potatoes). I don't say anything if I'm at someone's house or a restaurant (but at home, I do have small separate bowls for things I don't want to mix - and when I visit my parents, my mother still serves the vegetables or cranberry sauce or whatever to me in small separate bowls, because she knows I don't like the juices of foods mingling on the plate).

I miss having a nice coffee shop/diner that I can go to for a grilled cheese, though. There really aren't any in my town. (We didn't have the traditional diners where I grew up - we had coffee shops. I think the diners, especially the trailer-type, are much more a big-city and/or East Coast phenomenon). Also, I remember when I was growing up, it seemed like most of the coffee shops were owned by people of either Greek descent, or recent Greek immigrants (or immigrants from that part of the world, like the Montenegran part of Yugoslavia...). (Then again, there just were a lot of people from that part of the world where I grew up, so it might just have been a factor of the population make-up**)

There is one coffee-shop type place in my parents' town where they frequently eat. (But people from Jordan - I think that's where they said they were from - run it now. It used to be Greek-run and they still have gyros and flaming cheese and spanakopita on the menu, along with all the American dishes). Funny, I don't think I've ever gotten a grilled cheese there, though - then again, it's harder for me to find a good gyro than it is to find a grilled cheese, so I guess I usually go for the gyro. Which actually, is something I wouldn't have eaten as a kid - too many vegetables on it, and the meat would have been too spicy for my taste)

(* I do think that one of the most important things people need is reassurance. Reassurance that they matter, reassurance that they're doing a good job, reassurance that what they do is appreciated. And I have to admit, I spend a lot of time during my work-life reassuring people (mostly students, but there is the occasional colleague who seems in need of it) that sometimes I kind of run out of reassurance...and sometimes don't have it for myself when I need it. If that makes sense. And I don't feel comfortable asking for reassurance...)

(**It's funny how you assume things that are true about the town you grew up in are true about everywhere. I didn't realize that not every city in the country had a radio station totally devoted to polka music until I moved to Michigan to go to college...there were at least two Cleveland-based stations that played polka a lot of the day, and broadcast for part of the day in Slavic or Polish. (In addition to lots of Greek/Macedonian/Lebanese immigrants, we had a lot of people from what used to sometimes be called "Mittel-Europa").)