This week's farm box has a theme, and it's "what on earth am I going to do with all these greens?"
I have spinach, kale, asparagus, zucchini, mint, radishes (with their greens), something called mizuna, and lettuce. (I still have lettuce left from last week.)
I'm planning to make creamed spinach, so that's one down.
My next idea is Some Kind of Pasta Thing with the zucchini, asparagus, and as much of the other greens as I can reasonably cram in, but I haven't quite figured out the details on that one.
And I'm still going to have kale, mizuna, and radish greens left after that. I'm thinking saute them, but I need some way to make it interesting.
And, of course, salad. Lettuce and radish salad, with one carrot I have left from last week, and IDK what else.
The mint, if I don't have any better ideas, I can just hang up it up to dry and then put it in teabags.
I have some very exciting cheeses this week, though!
Cheddar, colby, and the Red Cat is apparently the specialty of a local dairy.
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she was dead silent on the drive home, but that was okay. sometimes, after band practice, she was just out of words. it was a short drive to her house. the only part where it actually felt weird was after i pulled up her parent’s driveway.
after that, the silence stretched so far it smeared and left a weird residue. she kept looking at the car door like she wanted to leave, so i looked at the door too, then she looked at me, and i looked at her, and my first thought was that she was going to tell me that the door was stuck. i was used to that car always doing some damn thing. it was the car me and all my siblings had learned to drive in, and it was really beat to hell. there were dents all over the body, which we’d unsuccessfully tried fixing up with spackle. it had looked nice for maybe a week, but then the sun wrecked it - the spackle cracked up like the mud on the bottom of a dry riverbed and turned a sort of off yellow-white that made the car looked like it had been molded out of chicken shit. it also had a bullet hole it through the cabin that whistled like a toothless old man whenever the car went above 40, so loud it could drown out the radio, and a cabin that smelled so strongly of bugspray that even the arizona summer we drove everywhere we could with the windows down.
(if you have kids one day, you will maybe, possibly, begin to understand how much i loved that car.)
anyway, i was thinking about what else could possibly be wrong with the chickenshitmobile, and she just kept looking at me, and then i wondered if there was something on my face, and she just kept looking at me, and then the penny dropped and i realized she was trying to work up the nerve to break up with me.
now, i’d seen her work up the nerve to do things like this before – it could take quite a while. and knowing it was about to happen made the waiting immediately unbearable.
so i said hey.
and she looked at me, very startled, and said hey back real small. like she’d been caught. and in a way, i suppose she had.
and i said it’s okay. you can just say it. i’ll be okay.
i’m always okay.
and she said: i’m really sorry.
i loved her, you know? it was highschool, but teenagers are capable of love. the way people love changes over time just as much as the way they stand, or the way they talk, but things don’t stop existing just because they're different. opposite really – a thing only stops changing when it's fully gone.
and i said, nothing to be sorry for, and i meant it. she looked a little relived, and i was happy to give her that peace. then she left. i watched her make it through the front door, because that was just habit at that point, and then i sat there a while afterwards, checking how i felt. and the answer was not good, but good enough to make it home. good enough to limp on.
so i put my car in reverse, took my last look goodbye, and immediately backed into her neighbor’s car.
crunch.
air bags didn't go off, which was good. i left a decent dent in the bumper of the other car. genuinely couldn’t tell if i did anything to my car – anything wrong with it just kind of blended together into the general ecosystem of hand mottled, sun cracked, chickenshit spackle.
i checked my glove box, and my car insurance info was, of course, out of date. my phone was dead too. as a teenager, my phone was less my lifeline to my friends, and more my tether to my parents, so i wasn’t particularly conscious of keeping it charged. both my fault.
i sat there a few minutes, trying to think of the best way to handle things, and there was only one answer i could think of, and i hated that answer, so i spent a few more minutes trying and failing to think of a better one, and then a few more coming to peace with what had to be done.
then i went back to knock on my now ex’s front door.
her dad opened, which i was very relieved over, even if he seemed less than thrilled. he looked me over, and in a firm, but slightly apologetic way said: she does not want to see you right now.
(i think he assumed i was going to try and talk her out of the break up?)
and i said not here for her. i just backed into your neighbor’s car, and i need to call my dad, but my phone’s dead. could i borrow yours?
and he looked at me, then back at his neighbors car, which sure enough was dented, then he looked at the chickenshitmobile, and if there was something wrong with it, it just kind of blended into the general Wrongness of the car, then back to me, and i could see him imagining the last ten minutes from my pov: getting broken up with, backing into a car, having to walk up to your exes door and borrow a phone, calling my dad to tell him that i just reversed into someone.
and his expression shifted from stern and apologetic to truly sad, which felt more kind that i deserved. things only got here because i kept fucking up - forgot to look behind me, forgot to replace the insurance forms, forgot to charge my phone. it was my mess, but his sympathy meant the world to me. i probably would’ve cried if he said sorry, or patted me on the back or called me sport, but instead he said
stay out here – i’ll bring you a phone.
and then he left.
i found a nice spot on the lawn in the shade under a sycamore, then settled into his grass.i was trying not to freak out, and was doing an okay job. he came out a minute or so later, not just with a phone, but a juicebox and a jar of green olives, which really threw a wrench in the whole try not to cry thing. soon as i saw those, a few tears squoze out. i was still hoping i could pass them off as Manly Tears but then he told me that he’d gotten the olives a few weeks before and had been meaning to hand them off to me, and that this was his last chance for that. then i made a sound like a horse drowning in a bog, and he patted my back pretty rough, four solid thumps, like he wasn't sure if i was crying or choking on an olive, and was trying to cover both bases at once.
then he went back inside, and i made a few more bog horse noises while finishing off the rest of the entire jar of green olives, and then i called my dad.
he was about ten minutes away that day, and luckily was home. he drove over, and we went to the neighbor’s house, and from there things actually went quite nice. the neighbor was a retired man who actually said he could fix the dent himself, no need for insurance. he said he appreciated that i didn't just drive off, and i said i was really sorry about his car, and he said he was really sorry about my car, and then he gestured to the chickenshitmobile and i laughed because it really was a disaster on wheels.
then we left.
i thought we were going to head straight home, but instead we went to a gas station, and we both got several slim jims that we folded into thick enough coils that we could put them on a hotdog bun because the growing up mormon equivalent of having a sad brewski with your dad is just choosing to make bad decisions sober. then he took me to the canals and we watched the sun turn all orange and pink, and he looked over at me and said:
brains are good at remembering bad days. so you gotta make sure that a bad day has a good part in in, so you can remember that too. remember that when you have a kid. try to do a good job on days like that - they're going to be a big part of how they remember you.
and then he gave me a big hug and said he was never going to eat another slim jim again.
---
the year after that i went to college, which kicked my butt in new and exciting ways. and on a lot of those bad days, after a test that went sour, or a faux paus that was particularly embarrassing, or some other hardship of my new adult life, i’d stop by the gas station and pick up leathery, half jerkied hotdog before heading to the canals to watch the sun set. i’d take a bite and imagine my dad next to me, grimacing through the slim-jim wad, asking what good thing i was going use that time to remember.
and in my head, i’d say you, dad.
i’m going to remember you.
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Sat too long in my feelings about the Gotham Knights video game Jason Todd going to therapy and trying to engage with his siblings from a place of healing and hurt myself, so now I'm inflicting this on all of you, but:
Do you ever think about how Jason only ever gets to experience Dick as an extension of the breakdown of Dick and Bruce's relationship at that time? Granted, depending on the comic era, Dick maybe doesn't show up as much as he should, or Jason acts like an antagonistic little shit, but overall, Dick's falling out with Bruce overshadows all of it.
And, like, yeah, it's funny to joke that only Jason knows that Dick went through a shitbag teenage phase and that no one ever believes him. (Gaslight, Gate Keep, Gotham ✌) And Jason is irate about it because how can they not see through what is clearly The World's Best Big Brother Act? How can no one else see it's fake?
(Unless it's not fake, and Jason just wasn't worth loving... No, fuck off, he doesn't care, he doesn't. Leave him alone.)
But at the same time, what if Jason's the only one who realizes it's a trauma response?
What if Jason's in the middle of a therapy session or reading one of the self-help books we see him ordering, and he just has to take a moment to breathe because, of course, it's a fucking trauma response. Of course, it is.
Dick's not pretending to be anything. He was, in fact, so severely affected by Jason's death that he over-corrected and now refuses to let himself be anything other than the Perfect Big Brother. Because he can't. Because when he's not perfect, when he's not there for them, they die.
Suddenly the golden retriever's cheerfulness is less grating and more worrying. Dick's need for perfection is less an annoying personality trait to compete with and more an exhausted cry for help that no one else seems to see. Not even Dick.
Because Jason realizes now that he might have never managed to live up to the Golden Boy mantle, but Dick will never get to put it down, either. Because he can't let himself. Because bad shit happens when he does.
So what if that's what he hopes Dick reads between the lines in the email he sends him in GK?
What if, by saying, "Hey, I realize now trying to hold myself to your standards was damaging my relationship with you, but I need you to know it wasn't your fault," was also Jason saying, "Hey, this shit isn't healthy are you fucking okay?"
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