March 16, 2013

Trying to recreate the Turkish experience, made apple tea this morning. It’s nothing like their apple tea, which is clearly heated juice called “tea.”

Home before March 15 was over, having traveled almost exactly 24 hours. Two solid days of travel for five of being there comes close to being a bad proportion. There was no trouble this time– oh, some displays of almost endearing incompetence on the part of United, Chicago Customs acting as though it had never gone through the process before (there were no agents working when we arrived)–but all in all, only a very long continuum of time, through most of which (blessedly) I slept. The bad thing was that my favorite bar at O’Hare closed, the one at which I was actually looking forward to spending some time. Steve the Plumber still has not finished the job begun February 13. The guy who fixed the stoop dumped the dust and broken stone in a big heap on my front garden. My Mr Fix-it karma used to be fair; now it’s in the toilet. But the bloodroot in its little family cluster is abloom. Nothing is sad in the face of that.