Project Management: A photo essay

…let me take you down, ’cause I’m going to… Strawberry Fields… Just add a tiny bit of water, and a long, slow cooking time. Later, as little sugar as we can get away with, and this time we also added fragrant lime zest and juice, to preserve the color, as much as possible, and add a little bite in what can sometimes be just a bit too sweet. Both the strawberry sauce and the rich, dark preserves, sweetened with brown sugar, turned out beautifully.

Never at any other point in our lives are we judged as harshly or scrutinized as thoroughly as we are when we are in school. We met a guidance counselor for the university, who, finding that D. is a PhD candidate, remarked, “After completing a PhD, many students are relieved at the idea of 9-5 employment.” Indeed.

If you suddenly had the burden of the last 65,000 words or so lifted from your brain, you, too, might find yourself buoyed, and bewildered by the incredible lightness of your being (five points if you can identify the author within two seconds) (Sorry. Reflex. Was remembering school…). D. has often said that he’s a fairly simple person. “Either I’m happy, or I’m stressed.”

It’s so nice to see “happy” again.

(“Nice” is such an unbelievable understatement.)

So much to do these days suddenly emptied days – weddings to attend, fruit to find, flowers to photograph, random women to anoint with thick henna paste… Okay, wait. That last one we don’t advise just anyone try with any random woman. First, pick someone wearing shorts nearby, whom you can be certain won’t clock you one upside the head. Next, one must beguile said woman, and approach them whilst they are reading, and utterly ignoring everything but their book. Then, the ensuing grunt of assent means that as long as you can get them to hold their book or pick-and-tap on the computer one-handed, one can do whatever one pleases with the other hand. Or, leg, as the case may be…

The librarians smile when we come in with our huge bag. We, who were weekend regulars for two years suddenly vanished for the last two. They may have wondered at our reappearance, thinking us gone back to our country, but no. We only just now have realized how circumscribed our lives had become, under the burden of student budgeting, stress, work, and more stress. Reading absolute nonsense from the new fiction section makes a weekend afternoon feel like a holiday.

And so the summer – thunderstorms and rain showers notwithstanding – finds us savoring various projects. How are you?