Sap Sister Friday Round-Up

My husband is making chocolate mole because the tamales we ordered for lunch at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants seemed to lack the promised mole and were dry and disappointing. I presume this means we are revisiting the tamales for dinner, which is fine because, for various reasons, it has been some time since my husband cooked. The sound of the blender firing up in the kitchen is as lovely as a lawn mower buzzing on a summer day. All is nearly right with the world.

I contemplated buying a new suit to testify at a state legislative budget hearing. But, instead, I wore a white sweater and my trusty black, subtly striped with grey, pants. That I thought about my attire for even thirty seconds shows what an amateur budget testifier I am. No one cares. It’s a cattle call. There are 10,000 school superintendents asking for the same thing (can’t they get together and have a manifesto signed by everyone?). The committee chair waves his ’30 Seconds Left’ and ‘Time Out’ signs at anyone who isn’t a school superintendent, the sound is hideous, and not a single legislator took notes.

Wisconsin avoided an ignominious end as a free state by electing a progressive woman to the Supreme Court. We are now seeing GoFundMe’s for her bubble wrap. A couple of her fellow progressive women Supreme Court justices showed up at her victory party wearing Keds which probably gives me more hope than anything else in this loony toon election season.

We are thinking about getting another sled dog. This would be unwise but consistent with prior practice. It’s not as if Swirl is lonely. He is oblivious to most dogs, well, actually all dogs. But we see a need to further complicate what could be a very mellow time in our lives. Lord knows there’s enough room and kibble.

Yesterday, two 32 oz. jugs of pure, unadulterated, Michigan maple syrup were delivered to our door. The syrup was from a farm that has been in the family of a friend of mine for over a hundred years. Her mother and mine were best friends and she and I were born just months apart. When I was very little, my family would drive out to Coats Grove near Hastings to gather in the sugar shack and watch sap turn into maple syrup and sugar. I’ve never forgotten the smell of the wood and the boiling sap. And those nights racing around the farmyard playing tag. All of that came back to me in a couple of beautiful bottles. Life goes on. The beat goes on. The sap still runs. It’s all amazing.