Collector

I haven’t written every day, skipping this weekend while busy with other things. I’m supposed write something every day, and I’ve amassed a folder full of topics on my laptop, at least two or three dozen topics ready to think about and write down. I started a great story about a wild trip to Chicago that Amy and I took in college, but I made the mistake to ask her for photos, and she didn’t reply right away, so I set that story aside. I may have to write early in the morning, unlike now, when I’m brain-dead in the evening. Until the ballgame comes on, all I want to do is to watch a light murder mystery, the perfect escape. Why is fictional murder such a comforting escape for women like me?

I collect murder mysteries on the many streaming services that I also collect. I’ve learned I like to collect and sort. It’s the way my brain works - I’m an analyzer. I enjoy putting the puzzle pieces together, whether an intellectual puzzle or a physical one. I like to collect stories - I should start to collect plot ideas the way Agatha Christie collected ways for someone to die. (She liked to collect all the ways a person could be poisoned.)

I’ve always been a collector. Well, not of money. I should have been collecting money over the years. It never interested me very much, which is something of a shame, because my friends who did smartly collect money over the decades are now starting to retire, and I’ll need to keep collecting jobs pretty much until I drop. I collect people, and I keep them. Well, the good ones. I’ve had to discard a few people, over the years. I don’t discard easily; I keep allowing that person opportunities to turn themselves around. But sometimes it reaches the point where it becomes healthier to discard, so you can concentrate on all the good people who lift you up. I have so very many true friends in my life. I’m incredibly wealthy if you measure wealth by friends.

I tend to collect emails. I should designate a day every year where I just go in and mass delete emails. It’s so easy to forget to do that, and then suddenly you have 100,000 emails in your inbox. I do delete some of them every day, and I have one email account that’s just for stuff I order. Easy to go in there and mass delete.

I collect books. I read for pleasure for decades, but then experienced years when I couldn’t concentrate on reading. Too much turmoil and pain; my brain wouldn’t relax enough to absorb anything. Those years of chaos took away this happy pursuit. A few years ago, though, I was able to return to reading. It’s been a joy. I read a lot of non-fiction, but also a lot of fiction. And yes, I like to read murder mysteries as much as I like to watch them. Digitization makes collecting books so much easier, and so much more dangerous. I now have enough to read to last me the rest of my life. I even keep a spreadsheet of what to read next - otherwise I’d forget what I own.

I also collect recipes. Guilty secret. I’m an adequate cook, could always improve. The pandemic has helped me be a much better one. Teleworking and not having to commute an hour each way has given me more time to concentrate on nutrition. I have a folder on my laptop with hundreds of recipes, all neatly organized. No idea why I’ve amassed so many when I will just google an idea for something to eat anyway. I sometimes also collect $1 cookbooks on my Kindle, and peruse them on my laptop. Can’t resist a good cookbook on Kindle special, especially if it’s an Instant Pot, or America’s Test Kitchen. If they’re digital, they don’t take up any room, so what’s the harm? A few weeks ago I even snagged the new Barefoot Contessa on a Kindle deal. Last year when I did Whole30 for awhile, I began to plan meals on a spreadsheet. So now I also collect meal plan spreadsheets.

I have a few go-to recipes. I love to make an Irish chicken korma, a homemade recipe out of the brain of my cousin Kay in Ireland. My sister Margaret gave me a fantastic gift nearly 25 years ago: a wire-bound notebook with a peace sign on it, and on the first several blank pages, she wrote down her favorite recipes. I handed the notebook to my mother, who added a few of her favorites, all handwritten, which I cherish having now. Mom’s sister, my aunt Barbara, gave me a few too, and now that she’s gone, it’s so lovely to have them in her handwriting. Over the years, I’ve given the notebook to friends when I’d visit them around the US and in Ireland, and they’ve entered their favorite recipes, too, and signed their names to them. Kay’s chicken korma was scribbled in, and now those pages are stained and warped, but who cares.

I think tonight I’ll make a new one-pan favorite, a pasta y ceci I found somewhere. So simple I can memorize it without effort and make it a lot. My friend Betsy in Vermont turned me on to chickpeas this summer. Who knew I liked chickpeas? Now I gotta collect ways to make stuff with them.