Sunday, August 30, 2009

This Ain't Your Grandma's Kitchen: Peaches, Part II

I spent the better part of my Friday night putting up that flat of peaches that has been gathering dust and fruit flies on my kitchen counter. That's right. I am 23 years old. And I canned on my Friday night. On the plus side, I've now got several quarts of sliced peaches canned in a light syrup, and an equal amount of peach butter (a new discovery, akin to the apple butter I am so fond of) sitting on my shelf, next to the pickles and the apple butter. On the down side, I think I am prematurely turning seventy. Someone get me five more cats, quick--I'm gonna be that woman before you know it. I'm already walking around the house making strange noises and talking to myself. Not to mention that the stack of cans in my kitchen is eerily reminiscent of the amount of food our resident cat lady kept stocked at her home when I was younger...

I am, truly, going stir-crazy. Is this cabin fever? Can you have cabin fever when it's not a blizzard inside, and you are actually able to leave your house if you want to? I have spent nearly this whole month with literally one other person--a good one that I happen to love, yes, but still just one--and it is taking its toll. With school starting this week (and this past week spent in orientation, where I met and actually spoke with people other than Ian) hopefully this will soon change. But I am beginning to realize that this is not easy. Alright, alright, I have been complaining about it for weeks--I've known it wasn't easy from the start. To uproot one's self and just go. You'd think I would be more adept at this, having done it less than a year ago, and that time, all alone. Most people, when I relate to them the difficulties I am having here--not having any friends, not finding Adam's peanut butter in the stores (thank god for online ordering), or discovering through observation and then proving through online research that this state does not have one blackberry that I can pick to put in jam--reply that I had difficulties in France, too, but I got over them eventually, and at least this time I have Ian here with me. And in most respects, that is true. I do have someone here to help me through this. Contrary to last year's experience, though, there is just that one person. I was immediately thrown in with a ragtag group of language assistants last year--people with almost nothing in common but one thing: we were there, alone, but together. And there were many of us. I didn't find myself night after night looking from my computer screen, displaying old episodes of Lost, to the same person's face, and then back to the computer screen. And as pleasant as that one person's face can be, a little variety would be nice. I am yearning for that camaraderie I felt as a language assistant in southern France, that feeling I felt in a crappy college house in Bellingham making latkas in a kitchen whose windows were frozen on the inside. I am tapping my foot, waiting for a time when I can sit in my own office on campus, with my own peers (instead of intruding upon Ian's MA colleagues...) and feel at home.

But I digress. Before you all start writing me off as a lonely spinster (though I suppose keeping Ian around prevents this title from becoming fully relevant, even in my advanced and imposed anti-social state) let me just say: I may be canning on a Friday night, but I am doing my damnedest to keep it young and hip. This is emphatically not your grandmother's kitchen, unless, of course, your grandmother taught you to can with a glass of chianti in hand.

2 comments:

Chelsea said...

You will never truly be a spinster. You get drunk and run around in your underwear too much.

Heather said...

Ok, not gonna lie, my Grandma gets drunk and runs around in Her underwear all the time! So... what does that tell you?