live a life less ordinary

last night i picked up my vegetable box from our local CSA.  that's community supported agriculture.  it was full of large leafy greens, many, many squash and about 20 green peppers.  i love it. i do. but it can be overwhelming.  and then i feel guilty.  what am i going to do with all this stuff- it's all so high maintenance. but since i'd committed to the entire season of the CSA box- i decided i'd better start cooking.

pretty soon i was back to the early '90's making a Moosewood-esque butternut squash soup- and some bacon-fat sauteed kale item. and i began to remember back to those early days before we had children.  when we were first married.  when we did cook almost every soup out of that Moosewood cookbook.  when we were still unwrapping wedding presents -like blenders- to make the soup.  when we listened to enya on tape and used empty wine bottles as candle holders and had tapestries on our walls.  (i guess actually not much has changed except the tapes). we were so young.  we had no money, but we had so much time.  unfortunately we didn't know it.  i so wish someone had told us.  we had 6 kid free years- with 20 year old bodies and energy- and we squandered it!  we probably worked too hard and studied too hard.  a typical night back then would seem like a date-night now.

the best thing we ever did was to borrow a few thousand dollars from my parents and go to europe for 6 weeks.  that was fantastic, not squandered time.  we stayed in cheap hotels, rented a cheap car and only went out for dinners.  we played cards, sketched, talked, looked at art and buildings,wrote in journals,  drank coffee and wine, probably smoked a few cigarettes  and read the same books out loud to each other outside on park benches.  in Prague we listened to Mozart in an upstairs room while it rained out on the square, in Assisi we spent all day at St. Francis's monastery walking through the woods he walked.  we soaked it in.  we lived in each moment. i love those memories.

so last night as i peeled the squash and riped the kale- i thought about life and expectations.  there is a line i love in Cutting For Stone, "life is lived forward but understood backwards".  so true.  you do the best you can. you can't hold on to things you once assumed or anticipated would come to be.  life changes us- we evolve. and if we don't evolve, life still changes us, but we're left holding onto old things.  then i wondered,  if life is super easy- if it does go according to plan-is it harder to break out of the routine- to live a life less ordinary? it might be pretty and secure and comfortable- but its it fun?  is it full?
i'm kind of used to things not going as planned.  i'm kind of used to things being out of the ordinary and i think it makes it easier to move outside of the lines- easier to dream - easier to take risks- because you've already lost what's 'normal'.  and maybe out of the chaos is the answer to why mike and i have such a hard time settling down- maybe as life bends us out of our expectations we evolve in a new way. in new places.

or maybe i just have a restless soul.

now what do do with all those peppers.........