From the Loaf to the Ridge

I would really like to write a long Bread Loaf post-mortem wrapping up my take on all the aesthetic, social, and waiterly stimuli into one witty and coherent package. Right now my memories are quite fond, despite the exhaustion, Blars, and having all my ideas about writing broken into tiny pieces. Arthur Sze told a story of a visitor to a palace being particularly impressed with an urn that had actually just been broken and then poorly reassembled by a servant, and someone (I think our honorary UCI MFA, Jessica) said that Bread Loaf made her feel like that urn. I agree. I feel a little crushed, but stronger for it. Also, I miss the people, and feel a lot of new sympathy for and professional interest in waiters.

I'm writing this from the of course empty computer lab of Meadow Ridge, my grandparents' new retirement home. A strange transition. Our whole family is crazy, my sister and I are stressed, worn out, and at each others' throats (but mostly still having a great time together), my grandfather is completely deaf and my grandmother is a little traveling cloud of gloom, but the visit is still going surprisingly well. In the dining room we had a five-course dinner and then between us my sister and I had carrot cake, chocolate cake, chocolate pudding and vanilla ice cream for dessert. Then we met my grandparents' sweetly nutty neighbors who have lived here since May but haven't yet unpacked. They have a sign outside their door that says--and I happen to know that this is from The Lord of the Rings--"No Admittance Except on Party Business," although as far as I know there is no party.