James is off at GDC.

I am not good at solitude.

Actually, I’m what I’m really not good at is cooking. For dinner I had a cup ‘o noodles and a deviled egg. Thank god he’s only gone for five days–inside a week, I’d be down to cold tortillas and whatever’s lurking under the permafrost in the freezer. By the end of a month, I’d be leaving salt pork under my pillow for the Scurvy Fairy.

My grandmother always used to threaten me with scurvy. If I didn’t drink milk (I hate milk) or eat vegetables or whatever–scurvy. Granted that Grandma was as clever as the devil, but not always entirely bright–hers was an emotional wisdom largely untroubled by facts–I was never entirely clear whether she actually thought scurvy was waiting in the wings, ready to strike down the erring child with the force of a thousand toothless sailors, or whether she’d just seized on it as a good threat. I’m pretty sure I got plenty of vitamin C. (My father tells me that Grandma used to invoke scurvy when my mother failed to drink her milk, back when they were dating, so whatever it was, it had a long and glorious history.)

My Cup ‘O Noodles brought it all back. That was one of my favorite foods when I was about ten, and my grandmother stocked them by the case for me. Then she’d tell me I’d get scurvy if I kept eating those things. In retrospect, there were possibly some mixed signals goin’ on there, but I’ll chalk it up to grandmotherly indulgence, and possibly a slight scientific curiosity to see what the dreaded scurvy would actually look like.