Another good day so far

Dear Friends and Family,

First thing this morning came good news about our friend Dave's continued recovery from the concussion he sustained in an encounter between his bike and a dog. He can now speak a few words, even big ones! They hope he'll come home in a few days, but he'll need a lot of home care.

I had had a pretty awful night because of leg cramps. I could only get rid of them by walking, and I was so tired: I wanted to sleep. But by the time I got up for good, I put that behind me. If anyone has any ideas about curing leg cramps, I would appreciate hearing about it. Dave says to point my toes either up or down. I'll try that next time.

I enjoyed Mimi's class today, though it was a bit of a struggle. I stayed the whole time and did just about everything. Hooray! It's fun seeing my friends Elaine, Louise, Florence, Murray, Sid, et al.

Yesterday, Laury, Merwin and I had a good time reading her interview with me as if it were a play. I think it's going to be really good. This is about hamletworks.org, our team's website. And today, with that out of the way, and with some new ideas about my essay from my friend Joe P., I started in on that again. It's amazing how this happens: put something you write aside for a couple of days or even weeks, and you begin to see where it falls short and what you can do about it. It's getting better.

No big cooking today, just an apple compote, to which I added a little pear and a little peach. This was for Florence. No doubt she'll have to add sugar! I realized that I didn't say what to do with the cheese pancake batter. You heat a frying pan, add oil and heat it, put the batter in the pan in small spoonfuls. When they brown on the edge, turn them over carefully. I keep turning until they are uniformly brown. For Merwin's batch I added a little butter to the pan: I don't generally use butter myself.

My friend from old days, Dotty M., sent me the sweetest recollection of my parents, and I will close with that:

“I wanted to make tofu pie today and was thinking of you as I thumbed through some old recipes that I had written as I watched your mom do her thing. Making all those good things to eat. The Blintzes, krepla, kanishes. She would call me over to watch the way she did it. I loved the way she measured the water in the eggshell...I can see her now. What a wonderful person she was, so caring so thoughtful. I have many nice memories of when you lived in the back. I think of your dad too...he was such a sweetheart. A wonderful family Bunny."

I was "Bunny" till I was 30, so you can tell how long I've known Dotty!

More tomorrow: we go to the hem and will find out if anything has changed in the few days I've been on T&P; also at last I see the hand orthopedist who I hope can cure my two thumbs' tendinitis.

love to all,
Bernice