Soup, Basically from Scratch

Thursday morning, mid-October, and I woke up cold in a way that felt like a decision had already been made for me. Not a run decision. A soup decision.

I had half a bag of carrots, two celery stalks, an onion that had been hanging on longer than it should have, and a box of broth I'd been saving for a specific occasion that never arrived. The occasion was apparently today. I found a recipe in one of my old notebooks, not even a real recipe, more like a list of things I'd written down after eating something good at someone else's apartment, sophomore year, the kind of notes you take when you don't want to ask for the recipe out loud because you want to seem like you already know how to cook. I used it anyway.

Gerald witnessed the whole thing and said nothing.

It took about forty minutes and the apartment smelled incredible the entire time, which felt unfair given how little I actually did. Gerald put out another leaf at some point this week and it was facing the stove today, which I'm choosing to read as moral support. I ate the soup standing at the counter because there's something about soup you made yourself that doesn't require sitting down, it's more of a standing accomplishment. I have enough left for tomorrow and possibly the day after, which means Thursday-me did something genuinely useful for the rest of the week. I wasn't expecting to feel that good about a pot of vegetables.

I have been holding onto a piece of news I'm not quite ready to write about directly, something that came in sideways, the way things do, through a comment on an old post, a name I recognized from a long time ago. It's sitting in my chest like the soup is sitting in the pot right now, warm and not ready to be served yet. Maybe next week. Maybe I just needed a Thursday with something good on the stove first.