Isaac is miserable about having to write a summer journal entry, so in solidarity I’m writing one, too.

July 11, 2013.

This morning I cleaned the bathrooms for the first time in a few weeks. I thought about time passing. A baby screamed outside the window with that sound that could be crying or laughing, and from behind a closed door Isaac made the same sound. I thought about how summer used to last forever and now it flies by; I know it’s a clichéd thought, but that doesn’t make it less true–it might make it more true. Our summer days are the old-fashioned kind, nothing planned, but long and busy. They race by in a flurry of periods of activity mixed with spaces of inactivity, but they’re not particularly eventful, and maybe that’s why it’s hard for Isaac to think of anything to write about. It honestly doesn’t feel as though we have time in our days for notable events, that’s how full they feel. I thought about how Camus said “Since we’re all going to die, it’s obvious that when and how don’t matter,” and about how he died in a car crash with a train ticket in his pocket, for a train ride he could have been on. I know about these things from wikipedia and some dumb website that collects people’s quotes, and I wonder if Camus would have had any respect for these because obviously it means people are trying to understand everything, on some level, or if he would have been depressed by them because he said, “what we ask is that articles have substance and depth, and that false or doubtful news not be presented as truth.” I remembered another time that I’d cleaned the bathroom, and I’d made a humorous quip about how scrubbing a toilet if two little boys live in the house is sisyphean and leads to existential despair, and I’d wondered if Camus had ever had to do it. And I think that this quip was proof that I’d gotten Camus completely wrong my whole life, and I wonder why that was. Because I’d read him in high school French class, and I don’t speak French at all? Because I speak precious little English, either? Because I’d read him in high school and I heard what my teenage self needed to hear? Maybe I have it all wrong now, because I’m forty-four and I’m hearing what my middle-aged self needs to hear. I thought about this quote “I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself, forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy,” which is not despairing at all, but completely hopeful, and I claim it for The Ordinary, and I apply it to all things–to getting out of bed in the morning and deciding to wake up and live, to embracing the long littleness, to scrubbing toilets and listening to the boys bicker and scream and laugh, over and over and over again, to all the beautiful tediousness of our long, busy, uneventful days. Isaac just finished his journal entry, and he said that tomorrow he’s going to write, “Yesterday in my summer journal I wrote about writing in my summer journal, and next day I’ll write about how I was writing in that summer journal about writing in my summer journal, and in that summer journal I was writing about a river!”

We have so many vegetables now, from the farm, and I bought so much fruit from the store that I have a ridiculous sense of hopeful anxiety. I know what I want to do with all of it! But we only eat so many meals a week, and I don’t want any of it to spoil! I got myself a cherry & olive pitter for my birthday (thanks, Mom and Dad!) because it seemed like such a fun, frivolous item and therefore perfect for a birthday. So now, of course, I had to use it! I bought a big bag of cherries, and Malcolm and I pitted a bowlful. I made a batter of ground almonds, with almond and vanilla extract. I added chocolate chips, and I whizzed half in the food processor to break them down so they melted right into the batter. I made this in my big old french cake pan, but you could make it in any largish cake pan. Everybody liked it!

Here’s Everyday by Yo La Tengo.

Cherry chocolate cake

1 cup sliced almonds
1 cup powdered sugar
1 cup flour
pinch salt
1 t baking powder
6 T soft butter
3 eggs
1 t vanilla
1 t almond extract
1 cup chocolate chips
1 1/2 cups cherries, pitted and halved

for glaze
3 T powdered sugar
1 T (+/-) milk

Preheat the oven to 375. Butter and flour a large cake pan.

In a food processor, process the almonds till finely ground. Add the sugar, flour, salt and baking soda, and continue processing until even more finely ground. Add the butter and process till it’s thoroughly incorporated. Add the eggs and extracts and process until completely smooth. Add half a cup of chocolate chips and process until they’re grated into the batter, then add the rest of the chips and process for a few seconds to combine.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan, and spread the cherries over the top.

Bake 20 – 25 minutes until puffed and golden and firm to the touch.

Mix the powdered sugar and milk to form a glaze about as thick as light cream. Pour this over the top, and it will set as the cake cools.