A Rainy Friday

 

Friday, July 20, 2012 – A Rainy Friday

Help!  It’s the Tree Monster!  Just a few hours ago, I confronted this ugly brute standing there at the entrance to the woods, staring me down and blocking my path.  Since he clearly wasn’t going to shift his menacing stance, I summoned up my courage and made a swift detour around him.  It’s a good thing I was armed with my camera. 

I guess I wasn’t paying enough attention to the weather report this morning or I would have skipped the walk.  After last night’s thunderstorms, temperatures were indeed cooler, probably in the 70s.  I didn’t consider that the humidity levels were still up in the stratosphere when I made the decision to take a brisk morning walk to the post office.  I was simply thinking that I could burn up some of those calories from last night’s birthday cake.  My mail and I were a tad soggy by the time we reached the post office, and I was even soggier by the time I returned home.  Oh, well.  It was nothing that a shower couldn’t cure. 

Warning:  if you’re not a foodie, you can skip the next two paragraphs.  I met my friend Janet for lunch at Woodlands (aka Dosas to Die For).  It turns out that the restaurant has a new owner, new décor, and a slightly different selection of items on the buffet.  Even with an increase in price, it’s still a terrific value at $7.95 per person.  A group of Indian women dining at the restaurant gave us informal lessons on how to eat some of the less familiar items on the buffet.  I now know to punch hole in the little crunchy puff, fill it with potato-chickpea mixture, drizzle on tamarind sauce, and then dip the whole thing into some spicy coconut water before I pop it into my mouth.  Yum!  And that cute little donut shaped thing that’s actually made out of lentil flour?  You put it in one of the small metal bowls and ladle some sambar (a chunky vegetable soup) over it.   It’s called sambar vada, and it elicited another enthusiastic yum! of approval.  There were some new vegetable combinations to try as well as some old favorites, like the heavenly masala dosas.  The same held true for the dessert offerings:  familiar carrot halwa alongside an innovative mango rice pudding.  

It was a delicious lunch, and on the runny-nose scale, it rated 4 tissues.  Why is it that I never see Indian people with runny noses when they’re eating hot and spicy food?  Is it genetic or cultural or maybe developmental?  Is it something children learn at home, a family secret passed down from one generation to the next?  I’d love to know because I’ve been eating Indian food for years, and I still routinely stuff my bag with tissues before I go out for an Indian meal.

Maybe it’s the big lunch or maybe it’s the rain (actually it’s just one drop every ten seconds or so) that’s making me feel so drowsy this afternoon.  When a cup of real coffee didn’t snap me out of my tired state, I decided to turn to a new cure, something I call a “sky break.”  All you have to do is go outside and look up at the sky.  Do a wide-angle scan, all 360 degrees, which will take at least 30 seconds.  Take a few deep breaths, open your eyes really wide, and pay close attention to what you see.  Sometimes it’s colors, other times it’s the movement of clouds, or the way the sun illuminates certain parts of the sky.  If you’re still feeling sleepy when you come back inside, give yourself permission to lie down for a nap.  That’s what I’m going to do.  A rainy Friday afternoon is a good time for a little self-indulgence.