Momomama
There's a cricket in the house. First it was in the kitchen all day yesterday, but this morning it seemed to have moved to the bathroom. The first thing I did upon hearing the chirping was to make sure it wasn't the smoke detector with a low battery. After that I started tearing apart the corner from which the chirping was coming. But that sucker hid pretty well.
On Saturday I made ciabatta, which is my favorite kind of bread. I really wanted to make sourdough, thanks to the suggestion made by one of my favorite librarians, but I was about a week behind before I even started. I started to read the section in the Bread Bible about feeding the sponge and how it makes it's own yeast and how it needs supervision for the first five days and I imagined bringing a ball jar full of flour and water to work and I turned the pages as fast as I could to get out of the sourdough chapter. I may just order
this, unless I can find a local baker willing to share the sponge. The ciabatta was perfect.
I should be writing the Annual Report, but I just can't do it. I keep telling myslef that I am thinking. Thinking. Only, I am not really. I should be looking up patient numbers and procedure stats. But that's not fun.
This afternoon my boss and I visited with our local Assemblyman. (Well, he's not OURS as I live in a different district.) The man was so smooth. And also, I think, mildly retarded. Because what the hell do the rocks in the Adirondacks have to do with family planning? I think he liked me though...his smarmy "Keep Smiling, Martha," really won me over.
Yesterday afternoon I dropped Bill off at the airport for his two month trip to Alaska. Sigh. Then I went shopping. I needed to feed my recent backing obsession with a bundt pan (for the tunnel o' fudge cake), a cooling rack, and
The Bread Bible.
When I got home, I was feeling sad about missing him already, and was dreading two months with no chit chat, so I curled up on the couch with a beer and a description of how to make a sourdough sponge starter. Then he called. Twice. Because he was stuck in Albany due to storms over Chicago. So sad for him. So nice for me.
Our new neighbors are obviously not right in the head. Why else would they rent a house with no plumbing (ripped out and sold by owners), no furnace (also ripped out and sold), a pond in the kitchen and tree growing through the floor in the back room? Also, neighbor Tracy says, "Anyone tries to sit on the shitter is gonna end up in the basement."
This house was left empty when the owners died within three months of one another. (The man's epitaph reads - "I finally made an ash of myself.") This was over two years ago, but his empty cans of Busch still litter the front porch. They left the house, and the back taxes owed on it, to their three daughters - K.1., K.2., and K.3. We can never remember which is which and what the third K is for. For the past two years they have pulled the belongings out of the house one at a time...a soup spoon here and a mattress there. Now the place is empty but still stinks to high heaven. Probably because the three K's have teenaged boys who use the place as a hangout for beer drinking and, I assume, sex (but I have never seen a girl within 25 feet of the place.)
Last week though, K2 announced to Bill that they have renters. And the renters have been moving in, but have yet to stay there. Do they know that heat is important here?
The pharmacist was confused by why I would renew a perscription for birth control pills at the same time as filling a perscription for prenatal vitamins. "You realize that this is contradictory, right?" she asked. "That prenatal vitamins are for people who may become pregnant, which you may not if you are on the pill?"
Which I did understand. But instead of just saying I was stoppong the pill after this month and didn't want to make another trip to the pharmacy then I went into total Martha mode and overexplained about how Bill is going away and I hate the pill and two months of tracking my cycle and charting and all that will be good practice for when he is back and I start to do the fertility awareness management so I don't get pregnant unless I do and then that will be okay too.
"Yeah. Okay." says the pharmacist. "Sign here."
I just realized this morning how much we use the barter system up here in the woods.
Tom installed our washing machine for a loaf of Anadama bread and plate of Lemon Cheesecake Bars. Cary and John replumbed the upstairs bathroom and installed a shower unit for two days of fishing and a free place to stay. Jim does our wiring in exhange for a night or two in our smallest room.
It seems to me we always get the better deal, but the whole process infuses all involved with good karma. And there has been lots of trading and helping and being sweet going on lately. Which is probably why my car battery chose to die when little Trixie was at the shop, getting her squeaky brakes fixed. I think it must be related to my calling a mechanic and making a bed for those folks who got stranded down the street back in June.
Stacking firewood is so much more fun, if you pretend it's and olympic sport. Deductions for improper log placement, dropping, misclassification of kindling. More points if you take it from high on the pile, or lift off the ground.
The new washing machine in the back hallway is the best thing that ever happened to your house...having a bat swoop back and forth over your head as you get the last load out of the machine is not so much the best. It is horrifying and makes you scream and run and go all fetal on the couch, screaming "There's something in the house!" Which might not be the best thing to yell after watching a zombie movie. So your husband gets all brave and grabs the broom and a big stick and puts on a hat because "It might get caught in my hair." And then you imagine bat wings tangled in your own locks and claws scraping at your scalp. he looks for the bat and finds nothing but you make him wait with you while you pee anway because if a bat is tangled in your hair, you'll need someone to help you run if your panties are around your ankles. And then you run to your bedroom and get under all the covers and hope you won't have to get up again in the night.
Yesterday, Bill found a message in a bottle down by the river...
"Dear Someone,
I farted and when I cheked (sic) there was poo.
You smell like rotten cheder (sic) cheese.
Your friend,
Somebody
PS You Smell like poo too.
bye bye"
Why doesn't Nicholas Sparks right about that shit?
There's a bridge near my house that reminds me of England. We used to walk home over that English bridge, drunk and smoking and sometimes thinking there was someone following us. Or I would bike over it, often drunk and smoking as well. I used to check the stomes of that bridge for snails as I walked by. their trails would shine in the moonlight. (I never saw such bright moonlight as in England.)
This bridge near my house in the just about the same...in length, in that it is an aeched stone bridge over a lovely river. On Saturday night Bill and I walked home from the bar, because even three drinks sends us home by foot. On the way, we stopped at the plastic sign in front of the most recently abandoned business in town. Someone had already played at rearranging the letters on one side, so I stared at the ADOOFAENRY499 until I saw "any odor 4.99" take shape. I left F, E, and A to trail off below..the A lying on its side.
We walked over the bridge and stopped in the middle, leaning on the stones. Down in the water I could see clouds and some stars and dark dark darkness.
I'm sure my darling husband did not forget we had a date tonight when he left to go fishing for the evening.
I'm sure my headache will go away after the fourth tylenol.
I'm sure the bank will EVENTUALLY figure out my name change.
I'm sure someday my work to-do list will get shorter.
Betty the Standmixer is a bad influence. All I want to do is bake.
(And the question here, MissBliss, is not if it's cool enough to bake, but rather is it warm enough to be outside?)
I have fantasies of just locking myself inside for weeks at a time, with nothing but grains and yeasts and butter. Worse, I am encouraged in my pursuits. Why, just today, I wondered aloud if maybe I couldn't bake our own english muffins...Bill thinks so. Alana says so too, but recommends crumpets.
Someone asked me what I did this weekend, and I was pleased to say I couldn't remember a single thing, other than some baking.
I did have many dreams though. Probably because I spent so much of the time sleeping.
