A Completely Successful Evening

We had a friend over for dinner last night, and it was outrageously fun.  I spent the entire day, really two days, cooking and cleaning and singing along to music while I cooked and cleaned.  And every single part of it was so satisfying. 

First, cleaning this apartment was beyond necessary.  We like to keep the windows open and the air conditioning off when possible, which is lovely but lets in a lot of dust and dirt, and we end up ignoring the layers of dirt and dust for a long time.  This time, cleaning, I moved furtniture around and cleaned the baseboards and picture frames and, instead of mopping, got on my hands and knees and wiped the floors down.  (My mother's stance:  Mopping just moves the dirt around, if you want to get it clean you have to get down on the floor and wipe it up, and I am definitely her acolyte in that regard.)  There are some rooms I didn't get to at all, but the rooms that are clean are CLEAN. 

Side note:  I wish I had a really great vacuum cleaner.  I can't decide if it is wonderful or sad that I dream about getting a Dyson, for instance, the way other people might long for jewelry or a fur coat.

So I like cleaning and find cleaning incredibly satisfying.  Hooray.

Second, I like cooking.  If I say so myself, I made some amazing stuff for dinner last night.  My friend is a habitual late-comer, and it was forecasted to be 90 degrees, so I decided to make things that could be served cold.  Well, I did make a blueberry crumble for dessert, which could have been hot, but I made it the day before and warmed it up a bit.  The main course was a harvest grain mix (it has stuff like orzo and couscous and red quinoa all mixed in) and I made a an orange sherry vinegarette and chopped up a bunch of stuff into it - artichokes and grape tomatoes and chicken and mushrooms and feta cheese.  It's pretty good.  And it seemed to impress my friend, which was definitely the crowning glory.

Third, I love singing. Especially singing along to the radio or my itunes while I'm driving or doing something else.  Thoughtless singing, the kind that doesn't have to sound pretty, singing that's just you carving sound out of yourself, finding resonances in yourself you didn't know you had.

So it was already a great day.  Then my friend came over and we had a fantastic time!  I hadn't seen him properly in ages, and had been saying I would invite him over for dinner for about a year, and it was so wonderful to sit down in my nice clean house and eat incredibly tasty food and catch up with someone who talks about the things I care about - books and jazz and plays and food.  He's a Brit, as well, and spends a lot of his time bouncing between London and Chicago, so it was wonderful to vicariously be reminded of my other home. 

Now, the one down side is I drank too much wine and went to bed at 2 am for the second night in a row, and had to get up to go to rehearsal this morning.  Oog.  But it was a small price to pay for having such a damn fine time!  Glorious!

Now, if I can just get myself back over to the UK, it seems my friend's new girlfriend is buddies with Benedict Cumberbatch.  Really.