The Cheese Ball

Yesterday I didn't write anything about Dan or about me. I just couldn't. I had spent the morning fighting the good fight against judges and prosecutors and trying to get clients to understand the ways of the world. It was all so surreal. I was back in my world but my soul was not in it.

I just didn't want to be there. I didn't want to do anything except feel sorry for myself. Helping others sort out their problems sorta precludes that for awhile. So I was angry. At myself, at the world, and at my job.

Dan and I use to talk about the same old Cheeseball. His was climbing in the truck every day. Mine was walking into a courthouse. "Here I am eating the same old Cheeseball" he would say on days when he was discouraged with his job or with life in general. When he wanted to know how I was doing at work it was "How's the Cheeseball today?"

We bitched about our jobs to each other and always came around to the fact that this was the food we had chosen and we were stuck with it. We usually decided, by the end of the conversation, that we actually liked what we did. It was just an occasional nut that got stuck in our craw.

The Cheeseball reference came from our mother. Every Christmas she made a terrific Cheesball of cheddar, Swiss, and some other kind of cheese. She would shred that stuff and mold it with cream cheese (counting calories, anyone?)  and then roll this giant thing in nuts. I hated the nuts but once you got inside it was heaven.
So Dan would remind me to get past the nuts. And I would remind him to spread his a little thinner on the cracker!

The problem with the Cheeseball was that finishing it was a problem. One could come to hate that thing by the end of the season. And Mother would NOT throw it out. It had to be eaten.......

Forgive me but yesterday I choked on a nut. Pass the milk and I will wash it down.

That's what Mom would tell me to do.

So would Dan.

Today I am eating more of the Cheeseball.

It's not bad.