Start to make it better

DID YOU KNOW? Meryl Streep filmed the "choice scene" of Sophie's Choice one time and refused to do it again because it was too painful.

What happened was that I got a birthday card about a month ago featuring a portrait of my grandmother as a giant flying snake (courtesy of my four-year-old cousin) and it made me reminisce about first grade while I was at the laundromat later that evening, and I started writing a big essay about that, and the past, and the future, and Geraldine's Big Snow, but I never finished it, and that kind of turned me off from blogging for a little bit.

So I think I would like to return to blogging except with shorter-form posts. I know that my dad and Sam's Mom always start their e-mails with, "Hey, since you haven't blogged lately, what's up?", so maybe this will help to bridge the communication gap a little bit, and also get me back into writing and thinking critically on more of a daily basis. The only trouble will be coming up with a DID YOU KNOW every two days or something.

I've been sick for the past few days, in pretty much all conceivable ways, like a physical kind of way and an "Oh Rose, thou art sick!" kind of way and a "You're so sick, Oedipa" kind of way. Anyway, I came up with this drink that makes me feel less sick, just for a minute. It hasn't really done anything to cure my sickness yet, but it feels a lot better when I'm drinking it.

Chop up an inch of ginger, zest half a lemon, squeeze the juice of the lemon into a little pot. Fill a chowder mug with water, pour the water into the pot. Sprinkle in some nutmeg into the pot, get it boiling, turn it down to low and let it steep for about 20 minutes. Meanwhile, fill the chowder mug with so much honey that the entire bottom is covered in a 1/4-inch-thick layer. Pour the boiling water through a strainer over the honey and stir.

I realized that the reason this sounded so good to me right now is because it is basically a hot toddy without whiskey, and I had a hot toddy at Genie's, the greatest breakfast place in the northern hemisphere (I'm coming, Tierra del Fuego).