Matt's Journal

I have just 10 minutes to write this – let’s see what I can flash-write here. We are going to a special “healing Mass” at OLA in Carmichael. Laura wanted to go. I have to get dressed. Nice shirt, nice pants. My old wool shirt and blue jeans just won’t do.

We had a great breakfast. Coffee led the roster. I love coffee. And I found a good book at the SCC library, a new book on coffee, all aspects of it, and the title is appropriately “Coffee: From Bean to Barista”. It is a book of much wit and charm as well as being chock full of facts. It’s fun reading it over a cup.

There was also “breakfast bread”, what we called French bread growing up (Laura called it Italian bread) – the baguette-style, not the square factory loaf that was standard when we were young. The breakfast bread, sliced thin and run through the toaster, and then slathered with Greek yogurt, which I use like butter, and some marmalade from the place where we buy tangerines up in the foothills near Auburn.

Breakfast is a religion with me. I will eat something every day. It might be soft-steamed egg and bread, or oatmeal, or cereal. I used to keep frozen waffles, but they are expensive and contain too much salt. A piece of fruit sometimes rounds it off. Coffee or tea, usually the former, round off the meal.

Lunch is freeform. I usually eat leftovers and have done it for years. When I worked I’d bring them in a cold-pack bag. Now I pull them out of the fridge. I warm them up in the ‘wave and eat them. Sometimes I cook simple things. I grill raw sardines, or pan-fry them. Yum.

Dinner is the most elaborate meal and we take it together. Laura always made it but I do it a lot more often now.

Food is such a good and blessed thing – why not enjoy it to the max?

Our mass was moving. Sickness and death are guaranteed and yet we ignore them. Here we embraced and sent prayers for them. Say what you will, skeptic (I’m talking to myself here). There’s good in this. We ate a good lunch from Bella Bru afterward. That is so Catholic – a ceremony followed by a good meal. And, it was good meeting people there.

No one wants to be sick but even sickness can teach.

Off to drive my neighbor’s Corvette. He asked me to run it around the block to keep it in good shape.

Terrible. Doggerel. Yep!