Brain Food

It's an English day outside, or so P tells me. The snow has melted away, but I woke up this morning to the sound of the gutter trickling with semi-frozen rain that continues on even now. The sky is a silvery grey and when P and I went for our walk around the marshy boardwalk yesterday, the two swans that lived there all summer were nowhere to be seen. The first flushes of autumn have hardened a bit, reminding us that winter is indeed soon to come.

Inside, we celebrated the weather the best way I know how: laziness. Well, not really laziness. My brain was working, my body just....wasn't.

After several hours of thinking, reading and even occasionally talking without getting out of bed, I mustered up all my reserved energy to have a poke around in the kitchen. I couldn't manage anything very complicated, so when HC arrived shortly thereafter she was amused to find me in my too-short "I heart NY" pajama pants and a tshirt, eating a ramen-noodle breakfast.

At 1pm.

Part of the problem is this: being married to P and thereby meeting the people that he knows, I have come to realize that I am seriously historically illiterate. And geography? Forget it. It's quite embarrassing, actually, given how much effort and money has gone into my education. My parents taught me this stuff, surely.

So, on our walk yesterday I told P that something had to be done. I really could not sit through another dinner party pretending to know that Guyana and Ghana were two separate places, that the Swedes once had an empire and that the Po valley is not in Teletubbyland.

(Wait, wait...rewind. Seriously? The Swedes?!)

This morning, ever willing to help, P brought forth the Holy Grail of historical learning aids: The Penguin Atlas(es) of Modern History, by Colin McEvedy. Therefore, instead of worrying about things like "showering" and "breakfast" I got embroiled in the Congress of Vienna. These things happen.

Don't worry though, I'm recovering.

Tonight, I made chicken spaghetti with pesto spinach cream and corn fritters with coriander dipping sauce.

It's brain food. I swear.