It’s only 4:30 p.m. CST but I’m calling this day a win.

On 01 January 2014, I decided to go an entire year without complaining.  Three years later, I have yet to accomplish my mission so I continue to try.

I drove to St. Louis on December 22nd, en route to Chicago for Christmas.  I stopped in Rocheport for lunch and to buy a few presents at an antique store there.

My decision to spend an hour in this lovely town had some risk.   I last visited Rocheport with my sister Joyce and my then-sister-in-law Virginia.  My sentimental side pinned me to the driver’s seat for five solid minutes in front of Abigail’s Restaurant while I dared myself to get out of the car without weeping.

I made it.

I don’t know if my proprietress was Abigail or if the name had been borrowed from someone else.  She flitted around the place, lean and grey, in a t-shirt with an apron tied over her jeans.  She cautioned me against the soup I intended to order because her husband had made it with beef stock.  “Try the potato,” she urged.  “I made it and I used vegetable stock.”

I have never had such a delicious potato soup and I told her so.  She paused in the process of wiping the counter to give me the recipe, step by step.  Three simple ingredients, not counting seasoning:  Onions, potato and broth.  She describe the method of roasting the potatoes (peeled); chopping and sauteing the onions; and combining the two in warm broth after using a mixer on the potatoes to make a chunky base.

I tried it in Chicago for my son.  We used a mason jar to smash the roasted spuds since he has no mixer.  I admit that we didn’t do as well as Abigail, but close.  And Abigail taught me her recipe!  In a restaurant!  For free!  Unprompted!  The only other time that I’ve been so epicurianally lucky involved the fried tofu at Blue Koi.  (Their secret?  Corn starch!)

I made it through yesterday without complaining because I started the day at the Opera House having breakfast with Pat Reynolds.  Today could have gone south.  I dropped my glasses on the floor before I even got out of bed and spent fifteen minutes trying to stand after groping around to retrieve them.  Fifteen minutes.  I wanted to complain but I thought about my resolve for 2017 to be the year that I made it all the way to New Year’s Eve and bit my tongue.

I puttered around the house all day, putting away wrapping paper, unloading the dishwasher, and listening to NPR.  About one o’clock, I decided to try to replicate Abigail’s potato soup, but with baby bella mushrooms added.  I have a mixer but I’ve watch enough episodes of Chopped to know that electricity can make potatoes gummy. I used an old-fashioned masher.

Oh my.  Did it turn out fabulously!  I wolfed down a bowl as the sun set over Brookside and decided right there and then that I could make it until midnight without complaining — my belly full, the light bulbs in the kitchen replaced with the help of the world’s best step-ladder, and the little dog sleeping in her bed.

It’s the second day of the thirty-seventh month of My Year Without Complaining.  I could make a list of reasons to lament.  But I won’t.  Life continues.