Oh yeah...........

......today is Friday, isn't it? Isn't there supposed to be something about food in this space? Well, there'll be no recipe today because the picture of the food I was going to tell you about was on the flash drive. I've literally torn this little corner apart looking for the thing, dismantled a bed, moved the desk, cleared the floor of everything, cleaned off the top of the desk. No tiny plastic stick to be found. Maybe when some other eyes arrive tomorrow, it will miraculously appear to them. But I'm giving up.

So I'm cut loose even from that routine. Somehow the scenery and location have separated the days of the week from their usual meanings anyway (I had actually forgotten there was supposed to be a recipe today until I sat down to write), and the week itself has lost its rhythm. That's not such a bad thing, but since the scenery and location are temporary, and new meanings and rhythms won't have the time to affix themselves to anything, what's left is a state of limbo. I'm in-between, left free to do what I want.

The way things are turning out, I'm doing what I actually imagined I would be. I'm sitting at the keyboard with an extra cup or two of coffee, occasionally glancing up at the placid water outside. There's the call of a lone crow--that comic "uh-oh!" sound crows make that makes you think they've found something suspicious--and a goose just went honking its way down the prong towards the ocean. A squirrel got Ivy-cat's attention by gnawing on a hickory nut right outside the front door.

Temperatures in the mid-70s are promised for today, so I know these heavy jeans will be jettisoned for a pair of shorts, and maybe even a tank top. I'll drive into Rehoboth and take a walk around the village and then down to the boardwalk. Tomorrow, I'll be cooking for the first time this week and that will be fancy company food, either a shrimp and chorizo "paella"/risotto made with arborio rice, or, depending on the weather, grilled shrimp kabobs with couscous. So contingency shopping for both recipes beckons. (Dessert will be the same either way: Ruth Reichl's Raspberry Tart Oléron from her memoir, Tender to the Bone. More on that next Friday, I promise.)

To be perfectly honest, this feeling of being un-moored takes me some getting used to. I wrote elsewhere a while back that I am an unapologetic creature of habit. I think I grew so tired of uncertainty during those 10 years of floundering on the edge of poverty that led up to my present life, that when I could, I dove headlong into the cushy folds of security and never cared to look back. Occasional chinks in that so-called security over the years, mostly minor but some major, have given me first-hand knowledge that we really own nothing in life--it's all borrowed, to be passed on when we do. It's a healthy attitude to have, even if I don't remember it every day. A day like today is a reminder; it's a day to be made the best of. Book idea: The Joys of Limbo. Somebody probably already wrote it in the 70s.

My friend Ravel had a great idea to substitute for the missing music: suggest songs for people to remember rather than actually hear. So for Food Friday, think of Helen Forrest's saucy rendition of "Tangerine" (OK, she was really singing about a woman from Tangier, not the fruit, but on a lawless day like today we can take some chances), and Dean Martin's recipe for remembrance, "Memories Are Made Of This."

There. If that was fun for you, put in a note of thanks to Ravel.