28 July 2011

High summer, mid-afternoon

Then thank you, oh food delivery service, for running out of local peaches and cornish hens last night, so I ordered Finger Lakes plums, curried chicken salad and chocolate cookies. Then thank you again, for running out of chocolate cookies, so I ordered white-chocolate-and-dried-cherries cookies. And thank you again, for offering summer juices from the upstate orchard that grows the plums, and yes I ordered some. 

And when your man came, he was quick and kind, leaving the boxes outside my door as I called out to him to do since I couldn't get up from my work right away. And some minutes later on this difficult day that started so early and had me feeling beset and in need of pampering, I brought the boxes inside and unpacked them and put most everything away.

And then I had lunch. The turmeric, cumin, ginger and cinnamon in the chicken salad relaxed my breathing, the tiny plums shocked with flesh as diffusely-sugary as watermelon on the outside and as tart as lemon around the pit, and the cookies, oh the cookies!

Thank you, oh food delivery service, for being good bakers, and using pure ingredients. I promised myself one. One cookie, one white-chocolate-and-dried-cherries cookie. But oh food delivery service, you still had a mind to challenge my beliefs today. You knew what I needed wasn't what I thought I needed. You shook the cookie box hard as your truck made its rounds all morning, and three cookies broke, and you knew the soft-hearted me, the me who couldn't let three damaged cookies sulk, unloved, inside a darkened cardboard box, and so, yes: I ate all three.

And then I sipped some tart-sweet tingly lemon-apple summer juice from the Finger Lakes orchard that grew the plums you brought. And then, I wanted to work again. But only after giving thanks for the gifts that your last night's minor chaos brought, on hard-bumping truck wheels, in the strong arms of a quick, kind delivery man, in mid-afternoon of a high summer's day.

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