Bleak December

 

It's one of those grey, rainy New England afternoons that belong in November, not two weeks before Christmas.    The bare branches are sodden and black, and the rain blows against the window panes.  We awoke this morning with ice covering cars, driveways and roads in a slick, glassy surface.  Nevertheless, it's relentlessly Christmas out there in the big world, beyond my little world in a town of 2000 people and many cows.  I'm tucked into my snug room that faces the woods by now, but I went through Worcester today and all the craziness of Christmas shoppers speeding around in the driving rain.  Trader Joe's was all I could tolerate, despite my vow to do other shopping on my way home to Hardwick.  Trader's was full of Christmas salamis and blue cheeses studded with cranberries.  There was the inevitable stollen and Italian Christmas breads.  I just bought a chocolate cheesecake for when my daughter, Jen, arrives Christmas night;otherwise, most of the temptations were things I had to put back.  Now that I can't eat gluten, I seem to reach for familiar loves and then have to put them back.  I left with Christmas nuts, cheesecake, chocolate covered cherries and Annie's rice pasta mac and cheese.  Yuk.  We don't cook much or at all here at the house full of teachers.  The others have a steady diet of pizza from Lazy Mary's Pizza two doors down.  I eat hummus from my finger, or with rice crackers, if I have them.  Sometimes I bring salad home from school.  I'm waiting to morph into the person I was in my twenties, who didn't eat.  When I was a reporter, I ate once a day, something like half a tuna sandwich.  OK, I drank a lot of beer.  In college, I was 120 and in love with myself in my modern dance costume.  I didn't eat then because I'd buy an expensive 60s minidress, probably orange, and I'd run out of money and not eat for a couple of weeks.  I think a good substitute for eating is to watch PBS cooking shows, which I did at my sister's house early this morning, before everyone else got up.  Lidia stuffed her face with boiling hot risotto while I eat nary a thing; it made me feel virtuous. There was a new show on from Norway, all about Scandinavian cooking, which seems to mostly feature rhubarb.  Suddenly i wanted to fly to Oslo, which was bargain basement cheap online this week, but I couldn't figure out how to afford a week there once I arrived.  Norway is terribly expensive.  But back to substitutes for eating, I know an anorexic woman who loves to cook for everyone else, and she is a master with butter, cheese, cream, chocolate and homemade pastas.  She watches everyone else devour her food and that's how she stays at 87 pounds.  It's kind of a mean thing to do, though.