Thanksgiving, Working, and a Few Pies

Hi.

I know I haven’t been here in awhile. I’m about to type something that, I think, is the lamest thing in the world. But it’s true, so here goes: I’ve been really busy!

I can’t stand that. Everyone is busy. Everyone does all kinds of things that keep them from doing other things like baking and writing and taking pictures that they think they ought to post on the internet. So, I’m sorry.

In case you’re curious, I’ve been busy trying to be a high-school teacher. When I decided to abandon the PhD track in favor of the slightly more humble pursuit of teaching 14-18 year-olds about social studies, many of the most important people in my life warned me about how challenging and time-consuming the first year of teaching is. I scoffed. I AM A WORKAHOLIC! I laughed. I HAVE BEEN IN SCHOOL FOREVER! ALL I DO IS WORK! I WAS IN LAW SCHOOL ONCE! I CAN HANDLE WORK!

The arrogance. The hubris. I did not know how much work this whole endeavor would entail. I suppose I didn’t really understand that working at something you care about will inevitably take more time and energy than working at something you do not care about. Example: I did not give a flying-you-know-what whether or not my Master’s thesis would turn out to be publishable. I therefore didn’t wake up at 5:15 in the morning thinking about how I needed to polish my topic sentences or further buttress my ever-so-nuanced historical arguments or ferret out that one remaining piece of esoteric historical evidence. Oh how things have changed. One of the classes I’m teaching in U.S. Civics, and I’m convinced (probably not only out of arrogance and hubris this time, but narcissism and inflated self-importance as well) that if I don’t properly plan this or that lesson, my students, on the cusp of adulthood as they are, will not be equipped with the tools necessary to living up to their limitless (an impossible task—I understand) potential as citizens of the United States of America. They have the potential, you see, to dig us out of the dismal trench of civic apathy that we as American citizens are currently sitting in. They can MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE. But first, they have to know how a bill gets turned into a law, what the Fourteenth Amendment says and why, and what the difference between socialism and communism is. What I’m saying is, now I wake up at 5:15 in the morning. To work.

Well I guess that sounds like a lot of histrionic bluster and that who the f cares just bake a damn pie already. Okay fine well I did. I made a couple, in fact, thankyouverymuch, and I made them ahead of time, froze them (freezing the pie actually does wonders for the flakiness of your pie crust, FYI), and brought them to my family’s house for Thanksgiving.

My sister, Paula, and her boyfriend, Jamey, on Thanksgiving.

It was a good day. I went on a good run through a bunch of mountainside farmland, I sat around and read (I just started Last Night in Twisted River, which is the latest book by John Irving, who I really really like, not least of all because he writes about food in a way that only someone who loves cooking and eating can), and I did a minimal amount of kitchen work. Mostly I just sat and watched my younger sister’s boyfriend Jamey de-seed a pomegranate. He wanted to have something to do.

 

Anyway, so I don’t have much more than that. Today I am kind of regretting living in Salt Lake City, because the valley is very inverted and the air quality is so bad that running outside feels like what I imagine smoking a full pack of cigarettes would be like. On days like this I really miss Chicago. But, my students are learning about the First Amendment, and they seem to care, so all in all I can’t complain. I will be back soon with some actual baking and instructions on how to do it.