"A little more to the left, please!"

My son prefers oatmeal for breakfast. No matter what I cook up, he is happiest with a bowl of oatmeal topped with his favorite cherry jam. But every so often I think maybe it’s better to not eat oats all the time, and that’s when this recipe comes in handy: Quinoa granola. Above served with Siggi’s Icelandic style yogurt, which reminds of what yogurt tasted like when I grew up.

“A little more to the left, please! No, not that much! Less! A little less… Hmm, and then up a bit. Up, up, up – there you go. Yes, well, no! No, look! Now it’s all crooked!”

Sometimes I think living is like hanging a painting. We try so hard to get it right (whatever that means) we try to step back from it to assess how we’re doing, although you cannot really step back from life to look at life. Anyway, I am obviously still in the game since I’m up and about and writing, but sometimes I can’t help but think “wow, what a terrible let down life can be!”

Yesterday was such a day. It started out all right without any conspicuous issues, but around noon it began to look suspiciously dark, and then at four it took a quick but sure nosedive for the worse. By eight I was already wiped out, sitting in the armchair in my pajama, with a glass of wine surveying the landscape in front of me: Clean laundry (folded) and dirty laundry (in a mess) in piles and toys, books, paper, and crayons sprinkled on top it all.

I suppose as soon as one feels the day is going down the drain, instead of spending energy trying to salvage it, one should really just let it go. Let it go! Down with it already! But I don’t function that way. Though I’m far from being a card-carrying optimist, I do hang on a bit extra thinking things will somehow work out even though the evidence that it will not is staring right at me. I always think I have time to whip up some muffins while I clean the bathroom and tidy up the kitchen and edit some stuff knowing full well there’s only 25 minutes to go. Because a little detail such as the cat puking on the dining table will put a stopper to all of it. And a little thing like cat barf is all that’s needed for me to give up on the whole project and pour myself a glass of wine.

Anyway, today is Friday and I woke up to the begonias looking perky and colorful on my windowsill, where there’s also enough basil to make Insalata Caprese tonight. Let’s remember Lars Gustafsson’s motto: “We never give up. We begin anew.”

Have a wonderful weekend and see you again on Monday.