Throwing out my dinner

Tuesday morning I climbed the stairs once at our apartment, for the first time in a while. I seem to be slightly feeling better each day, but the cold is still doggedly hanging on. In the morning I walked down to Conad to buy lettuce and tomatoes for tacos. The Balzottis had to go try to renew their permesso (silly, because they go home this month, but this is Italy), so they were out of the picture for taco prep. The Ganziani happily came in early, donned their aprons, and went to work chopping and grating. With their help, everything was ready on time.

Daniele flew to the US to enter the MTC in the morning for his two-year mission to Tempe, Arizona. His mom, Mariela, sent me photos from the airport. On the plane they had WiFi, so he was able to WhatsApp with the group, which was fun.

About the time that lunch was served, Dee let us know that she was boarding a nonstop flight from JFK to LAX, the first one out that morning on Delta. She had spent the night in the airport. They offered her a hotel, but she figured that she would have maybe 3 hours at the hotel before having to get up and return to the airport. The thought of packing and unpacking for that little rest didn't appeal, and I think she made a good choice. She said via WhatsApp en route that her flight was very empty, so that she got to lie down across a row and sleep on the way to LA. Didn't hear much else other than that she made it home safely, probably around noon there, and promptly went to work. That's my girl.

The group for tacos started a little small, but grew steadily. After lunch they had some really energetic group karaoke. The Balzottis are enjoying being around the kids.

 

 

After lunch, Ugo showed up and we had our student council meeting, with Maria Jose in via Zoom, and Joyce, Marlene, Ugo, Anziano Balzoitti, me and the Ganziani in person. They were planning for things to come that I would not participate in, which was a very strange feeling. It was good to see Anziano Balzotti chime in with his opinions at a few opportune spots. I am so grateful to them for taking over and passing the baton for us, particularly with me feeling so cruddy these days.

There was a big transit strike planned for Thursday, which wouldn't really affect us much. However, we learned that they moved it to Friday, which would cancel our two classes and final dinner! Because I missed the last two weeks, it would be a real bummer not to have a final meeting. So Ugo decided to move everything to Thursday night. We won't get quite as many kids, but it will be fun. That took a lot of arranging, since we had the meal prep scheduled out to take up the rest of the week. Fortunately, we figured out a way to get everything done, and we will shop Wednesday morning. Then we realized that the Balzottis have a conflict on Thursday night, so we scrambled a bit, with Ugo offering to do the whole dinner. At last we decided that we could make it work by prepping stuff ahead on Thursday afternoon. My head, which was already spinning from not feeling well, took a couple of extra twists with all this.

When I went to get my rice and vegetable bowl from the fridge for dinner, it wasn't there. I looked around, and it had been washed and put in the dish drainer. I asked Sorella Balzotti, who first said she didn't toss any dinner, but then she said "well, there was that bowl which had been around forever." Yep, I had made the same thing the week before, and she didn't realize this was new. We got a good chuckle out of it, and I scrounged up some other food.

Once Ugo's class started, we headed home quite early. We needed to get buns for Friday's dinner, and Todis closes at 9pm. I showed the Balzottis where the key items (e.g., our tortillas for Tuesdays come from there) are to be found there, though they didn't have enough buns for our needs. We will hit a different store in the morning. It was good to get home and to bed early with how I was feeling. I chatted very briefly with Dee before hitting the sack about 9:30pm. It is nice that she is there, but this is not a fun way to end our mission: separated, me sick, her overwhelmed. Next time around we will use a better system!