While I wouldn’t wish the Existentialism Virus on any but the very worst of my enemies, there is something oddly pleasant about getting over it. It is roughly akin to the cough you have when you are getting over a cold, the cough that may hurt while you’re coughing it, but leaves you feeling better once you’ve stopped. I’m still coughing, both figuratively and literally, but after each spell, I feel a bit better, angstrom unit by angstrom unit.
The beginning of the end started on Friday, when the adored and adorable ‘mouse posted the cure for what ails one in the form of garlic stew, which I have on very good authority will not only cure what ails you, it will peel the skin off it. I look forward to my trip to my favorite butcher shop, a place on the Upper West Side where the owner remembers my name even though he normally only sees me once a year, when I show up two weeks before Christmas to buy the bottom round that will be turned into our Christmas Day spiced beef. This year, I’m not waiting for Christmas; no, I’m going next weekend, because ‘mouse swears that this stew is that rara avis, a stew that can be enjoyed in the stew-like heat of summertime.
It’s the garlic that does it, says ‘mouse, and I believe him. I don’t have the stew yet, but I do have the tzatziki. If you are not familiar with this wonderful stuff, it is more commonly known as “the white sauce on your souvlaki/gyro/chicken sandwich from the cart.” It is made from Greek yogurt (the ur yogurt, as far as I’m concerned, thicker and sharper and richer than regular yogurt; even the fat-free Greek yogurt tastes richer, somehow, than its Dannon counterpart), cucumbers, dill (which is optional), and garlic, the more, the better. Because I live in a Greek neighborhood, tzatziki is ubiquitous; everyone sells it, mostly the kind produced by the local enormous Greek foods wholesaler. A few shops make their own. My local makes one that is positively hot with garlic; the first time I tried it, I thought I was going to burn my palate right off, but by the second taste I was hooked. I brought some home tonight. Half of it went into the bag of chicken breasts that will be marinated overnight in the fridge and poached tomorrow night according to the late Barbara Tropp’s “no-poach” method (bring water to boil, drop chicken into pot, cover tightly, turn off heat and leave undisturbed for two hours; home economists and public health officials tend to frown on this method, and I would recommend it only if you have complete and utter faith in your chicken purveyor). Most of the other half went into the fridge, to be saved for future lunches and dinners, except, of course, for the tablespoon or so that had to be tested for quality control purposes. You have to have quality control.
Having thus fortified myself, I found that yet another mood elevator is sharing with your friends, either your actual foodstuffs or the recipes with which to make them. Thus do we have both a pot of cherry jam and a batch of molasses spice cookies for the literally crafty receptionista. The cherry jam comes from Mes Confitures by Christine Ferber; the cookies are another gift from ‘mouse.
Once I shake the cobwebs from my ears and the stress of a hard day’s desk-monkeying from my fingertips, there will be the hummus recipe from Sally Schneider for Owen, the black-bean dip recipe from Crescent Dragonwagon, to which she has given the whimsical epithet “hillbilly hummus,” for bunni, the chocolate chip meringues from my grandmother’s cousin for goliard, and, of course, all of the above for anyone else who would like them.
Of course, moods can not be elevated on food alone—at least mine can’t, or I will rapidly find myself unable to negotiate the narrow byways of my apartment. When I can’t eat another bite, that is the time to read about it, and to jot notes down on notecards, and think smugly to myself that in the end, it’s all egg research. Eventually I’ll get fed up with that, decide it’s time to put down the books and pick up the flute I bought in Eureka. I have never been a particularly good flea marketer; I’ve never found that little something that makes your hand tingle with anticipation as you pick it up, the way I’ve heard flea pro’s describe it. Then I went to the Sunday farmers’ market in Eureka Springs and found a flute, a proper band flute, a Gemeinhardt in excellent condition, at an absurdly low price. Although I spent my entire elementary and middle-school life in clarinet lessons, I learned how to play the flute when I was 10, because as any band geek knows, you can’t stop at just one instrument. It has been a good 20 years since I’ve even picked up a flute. I took the leap of faith, paid for it, brought it home, assembled it and positioned my fingers in B-flat, the note which we used for tuning up in band. I raised the flute to my bottom lip, blew, and the note rang out as purely and clearly as a bell on a cold morning. I snapped my head back and considered the flute in my hands, my fingers still on B-flat. “Whoa,” I said, Keanu-like.
Eventually I know that even this will only take me so far, and I will decide that it’s time to rejoin my fellow citizens and ask who’s up for a game. Although I am not a dab hand with palindromes, I did pick up enough to play with the big kids, which was not only fun, but also served to remind me that I am much better at anagrams than I am at palindromes, and I owe it all to Perquackey. As a wee baby I remember watching my mother and her friends spending noisy, raucous hours playing Perquackey, and as soon as I was old enough to spell well and lose gracefully, I was allowed to join them. The complete rules are here, but to summarize, you play by rolling 10 lettered dice and spelling as many words as possible with the letters you roll within a 3-minute period. The first player to hit 5,000 points wins; after 2,000 points the stakes are raised by adding three more dice to the roll and compelling the player to score a minimum of 500 points in the roll to avoid penalty. Unlike Boggle, you can’t use both the singular and plural form in a single roll, but you can use suffixed forms, so you can’t use VIEW and VIEWS, but you can use VIEW, VIEWED and VIEWING. If you get a particularly good roll, you can use EVIL, LIVE, LIVED, DEVIL, DELIVER and REVILED. Or you can get a particularly useless roll, the kind that are all consonants, or six e’s, or two Q’s with no U, and spend your three minutes moving cubes around in frustration. I used to think that that was the worst thing that can happen to you in Perquackey, but I was wrong. The worst thing is to see a really great word in your opponent’s roll, see it right there in front of you, beckoning find me! find me!, the way I did when one of my college buddies found the rarest bird possible, WOMANIZERS, a 10-letter word, a word that would have won the game for her in a single roll. I almost swooned when I realized it was there.
I’ll admit it: I’m a Perquackey nerd. I used to keep this under my hat until I read a book about The Dick Van Dyke Show, in which Mary Tyler Moore said that the cast and crew used to play Perquackey on the set, and that she and Ann Morgan Guilbert were the official Perquackey champions of the whole soundstage. As far as I’m concerned, if it was cool enough for Laura Petrie and Millie Helper, it’s cool enough for me.
Of course, when all else fails—not that I think it will—but when it does, I can always get my act together and take it on the road. But that is for another night.
