Kimchi and Thunderstorms

It's the end of May and we are having a heat wave. Records have been broken. Our doors and windows are closed; our blinds are drawn. We are trying to stay cool. At night, we open all the doors and windows up again and pray for breeze.
Tonight we are expecting a thunderstorm. Seamus hates thunderstorms. I like them, as long as I can hide from the lightning.

Blue was very sick this month with a freakishly enlarged prostate and an accompanying urinary tract infection. Once we figured it out, antibiotics quickly fixed him up. He wouldn't touch food for four days but now he is happy and eating again. I'm relieved; I've had enough sickness and death in the last couple of years to last me a lifetime, thank you. But I know it is not over. My dogs are old and this is no doubt a temporary reprieve from the inevitable. Thinking of the future is painful but important. Planning for death is hard but is something we need to do.

Today, I am on a quest for poles. Poles for the pole beans that I am planning to plant in the community garden. If I were a more organized person, I would have started sunflowers a few weeks ago and had the beans climb up them. Wouldn't that have been great? Yes, it would have. But anyway, I'm having a hard time finding suitable poles. I have found some possibilities in the garage but will need some help in cutting them to size. Rob is good at this kind of thing. In fact, it seems that Rob is good at everything he tries his hand at. Rob is enviable. But... can he make kimchi?

Another project underway is making kimchi. Kimchi is a Korean pickle, made with cabbage and spices and sometimes other vegetables and fruits. It is one of the famously healthy fermented foods that I want to learn more about. I've never made it before but I think I'm going to start today. The recipe that I found online instructs you to "massage" the chilies into the cabbage... having had some experience with both chilies and massage, I'm pretty sure that this instruction is intended for hard-core, experienced, Korean kimchi makers, not little Caucasian novices with soft hands like me. When I handle chilies, I suffer. But I like to go to Vietnamese and Thai restaurants and watch Asian people crunch down the whole chilies served with their pho, as though they were no hotter than bean sprouts.

So I'm going to take a shopping bag and go off into the heatwave to the Asian supermarket where I will buy some napa cabbage and perhaps some fresh chilies. I'm going to cut up a bunch of vegetables and rub chili and garlic paste into them. I'm going to suffer for my dinner. In this way, I will appreciate that I am alive and hungry and able to eat. As I walk to and from the Asian store, dripping sweat, I will look around for the bean poles that the beans will climb on. I am planning for the future, despite the coming storm.