Thursday

This is a slice of life entry. This was my day.

Day 2 of a horrible cold. Yesterday was the pits, except that I gave myself permission to stay in bed all day which is always nice. After sleeping late, I got up to study for my grantwriting test (an online course I took). Felt lethargic and sleepy. Went back to bed, then remembered that I wanted to make another try at the Sour Cream Bread that I tried, and failed, to make the other day. (My first failing was in putting salt with the yeast instead of in the flour later; eventually I killed the bread entirely because I was trying to encourage it to rise in the oven and A. kept closing the oven door, though he denies it. This morning A. leaned the two bread corpses against each other and left a sign “dough henge.”)

I arose and sleepily mixed and kneaded. I put the bowl in the oven at the lowest heat, and then got a brilliant idea! The heating pad! So I took the bowl out, put it on the bed on the heating pad, put a towel and the blankets over. The happy warm but not too hot bread rose joyfully. Later I punched it down and kneaded it again and put it in the two bread pans, did the heating pad thing again, and voila! I just took two lovely brown loaves out of the oven!

Around 2 PM I suddenly recovered from my cold. Kazamm! No sore throat. No fatigue. I got busy. Finished studying, took the exam (passed), and contacted Honeybee, for whom I plan to volunteer to get grantwriting practice. Then I practiced music (I sing at services tomorrow night, then on Sunday at a Central Jersey Jewish Choir festival).

Ben strolled in and we fantasized about vacations. I wrote to A. suggesting that we go camping on Prince Edward Island.

I called the plumber about a recalcitrant leak.

I read from a collection of M.F.K. Fisher’s writings on food and such. I wanted to go back to France. I wanted to cook, so I got out a frozen pork loin and stuck it in a bowl of water to thaw.

I knit a premie blanket.

I started dinner. Ben was sent out for a bottle of rioja, but he forgot what we wanted so brought home a bottle of a really fine Italian red instead.

A., home by now, played with his new Blackberry which had come by mail.

Dinner was ready. We ate cheerfully in the dining room on a fresh clean tablecloth. The wine was mighty fine. The dinner was ok too, but nothing to write home about.

Just as we finished, my newest student arrived at the door. While A. and Ben scooped dishes away and shut Cloudy in the kitchen, because she barks, I let my student and his mother in. They are from Highland Park, a town nearby, and are perfect Highland Parkians (intellectual but normal). She asked if she could hand out in the living room and I said sure. The boy and I retreated to the dining room and had a blast. He is a wrestler–I find that I am enjoying working with the athletes–they at least know how to work hard at SOMETHING. He was high energy, told me all about his failures in grammar. I did my first meeting introduction thing with him, along the way explaining to him what a pronoun is and that sort of thing. He had written an essay, and was pleased when I told him it would be a 4. From what he told me I got a good feel for his strengths and weaknesses, so we established what we’d be doing together. I complimented him on the way he has already taken ownership of the process.

When we were finished his mother stood up and said “That was really interesting!” Then they left, and I checked my bread and put it in the oven.

A. also got a new coffee roaster in the mail, a big super de booper buns of steel sorta thing. He started some coffee roasting. It set the fire alarm off after a while, so we have determined that this one, like the old one (which broke) will have to live in the garage.

And now it is after 10 and I am going to eat some hot bread with butter and read some more MFK Fisher. The house smells like coffee.

Night!