palace of winds

Last night I dreamt that Steph and I had gone back for another semester in England. I had just arrived at our dorm, which turned out to be a big summer-camp style room full of bunk beds. Steph had arrived shortly before me and claimed a bed already, but while I was trying to choose my own a bunch of other people showed up, and very shortly most of the beds were taken. I was glum at the prospect of having to spend a whole semester in a bad-location bed far from Steph (and admittedly a little hurt she hadn’t thought to save one for me [sorry, Steph, for dreaming you hadn't!]). A few people were snuggled down in their sleeping bags, passed out cold from the jet-lag, but I remember being curiously wide awake, ready to explore.

I dragged my bike out yesterday (the contents of the storage locker next to mine remain, as they’ve been all summer, strewn across almost the entire room, so getting my bike out is no mean feat) and zipped down to Whole Foods, where the samples were outstanding. I’m delighted when they have desserts out because they’re almost always incredibly generous with them; last night I had an entire half of a chocolate chip cookie (Mike’s, I think?), and it was delicious. It was like a better version of a Chewy Chips-Ahoy, which is saying a lot because the Chewy Chips-Ahoy was my very favorite commercial cookie as a kid and I haven’t had one since, so in my memory they are nearly the height of cookiedom. (If you’re wondering, the very height of cookiedom is our old family recipe [my mom's grandma's] for oatmeal chocolate chip, particularly when made by me, my sister, and my mom, for my grandpa, with Mel and I taking up a good bit of the usable counter space, and getting to lick a beater each at the end. As my grandpa’s dead now and the rest of us haven’t baked cookies together in years and years, this too is a cookie heavy with memory whose objective deliciousness I can’t truthfully determine.) So that was the pleasant surprise of yesterday.

And, because it kind of freaks me out (and I’m cruel enough to inflict it on you too): Three days to October. October.