Zlelponith

Once upon a time I mailed a package to a distant, unavailable ex-lover, one with whom I was purportedly "friends." (I was attached to someone else at the time as well.) My letter was written with a fountain pen on lovely paper, spritzed with the fragrance I wore when we were together, and included a mix tape. The colour of the ink and my pretty flowing handwriting pleased the eye; the texture of the paper, the indentations of my pen on the back appealed to the sense of touch; my old perfume surely sent him back to our beginnings, and of course, there was music for his ears. I wish I could remember what I'd included for tasting -- chocolate, perhaps?

His reaction? "I was as speechless as if you had kissed me full on the mouth." Many years later, the "old correspondent" I mentioned in my previous post is still geographically distant, and unavailable. But we're corresponding again, after a fashion -- mostly texting, to tell the truth -- following a long hiatus.

This post will be rather underwhelming, comparatively, but "the five senses" seemed a good writing prompt, no matter how terribly mundane my examples are tonight.

Sight

Dirty century-old window I tried to clean before plasticking (yeah, that's a word) it up for the winter. My apartment, known as The Garret (yeah, it's capitalized in my mind), is on the second floor of this old house, AND I have storm windows, so cleaning the outside of these windows isn't really possible. Sigh.

Sound 

My favourite sounds today were Dude's laughter, and Alexandre Poulin and Ingrid St-Pierre's "Blanc Cassé." I love downloading iTunes' free Singles of the Week when I remember.

Smell 

The stench of this removable caulking I have used around the above-mentioned window. I'm probably going to die of cancer from inhaling this stuff. Aargh. Using a caulking gun is hard work, very tiring for the hand. The gas savings will be well worth the effort, but the job of caulking all the windows in this place (followed by the shrinkwrap plastic treatment), is a bigger one than I had expected. Why oh why do tasks always take me twice as long to finish as I plan on taking?

Touch 

All acrylic, storebought sweater and knit skirt... Oy, I need to knit myself some more sweaters in natural fibres. More immediately, I need to get out of these itchy clothes and between my surprisingly soft microfibre sheets.

Taste 

Lunch today was leftover tuna casserole that I prepared on Sunday night so it just needed to be baked last night. This was fortuitous, as I ended up needing to make an emergency trip to the mall to replace the SIM card that had suddenly, unaccountably died in my BlackBerry on my commute home. (I hope this will be an isolated incident. The new SIM card was acting funny for a bit this morning.) I popped the cold casserole into the oven as soon as I got in, then headed straight to the mall with Dude. By the time he and I got back to The Garret, supper was ready. My tuna casserole is never quite the same twice; this one had a mix of wild and brown rice, lots of veggies, and plenty of creamy sauce subtly flavoured with a bit of curry paste. Dude loved it.

Supper tonight, The Moosewood Restaurant Cooks At Home's Tunisian Vegetable Stew, served over couscous. It is one of my very favourite ways to eat cooked cabbage, which ordinarily is not one of my favourite cooked vegetables. (Prefer it raw.) Unsurprisingly, this meal was not as much of a hit with Dude. He ate it anyway. I am NOT a short order cook. Eat it, or go hungry, them's your choices in this house kid. Life's tough, get used to it.