Some kind of normal

OK, so, happy Monday. I started this post earlier this morning, but I think the draft got bleeped out because, probably foolishly, probably succumbing to being up-sold, I upgraded my hosting service to a higher level – and more expensive – account. Which had to be migrated, and that always has unexpected consequences. But no big, I’d really only written a few lines.

I started off telling you that while I’m still adjusting to this retired thing, I feel like I’m starting to figure it out. And of course, since today I am feeling a bit more settled, the weather is nuts. We have been having a string of gorgeous fall days, sunny and cool, despite dire threats of rain that did not materialize. Today some rain was predicted and we got it, and then tomorrow it’s supposed to get hot, like 76°. I took the bus to campus at about 9:30 in a light rain, and when I got home there was thunder. Then it seemed like it was going to clear. Mark went for a walk and I drove to the pet store to spend about $60 on kitten food and cat litter and a scratchy toy for them. They’ve pulled some caulk off where my bathtub meets the wall and floor, and are going nuts on the cardboard box we keep in the kitchen for cats – so a  corrugated cardboard scratchy thing seemed like a good idea, even for $13. Anyways, while I was driving west to the pet store, there was a huge bolt of lightening, and it just started pouring. I managed to get in and out of the store relatively dry, and by the time I was home the rain stopped so I could unload. There’s a big puddle in the driveway and I haven’t checked the basement yet, but so far I’ve survived OK. (the basement stayed dry, yay!) Not sure if Mark had to take shelter someplace during the downpour.

So that’s Monday’s weather.

I guess I left off last Thursday, when the painting, preceded by scraping and washing, the last phase of our big siding repair and screen porch project, was just getting started. The house is a couple of colors that all needed to be matched. There’s a dark green trim and we had an old can of that, so finding that formula wasn’t a problem, and there’s also a yellow trim/accent color and that also didn’t seem to be a problem. They matched the body of the house color to the Hardie board on the garage but somehow even though one would think, since the garage is way newer than the house, and less faded, the first sample that they tried on Thursday was too light. They took chips from the scraping to the paint store, and no samples arrived Friday. But the stuff that came Monday morning looks good.

The painters also offered to check to see if one of their guys could do some screen repair while the screens are off the house for the painting. That sounded like a good idea because it’d be pretty hard for me and Mark to get the screens back up if I took them somewhere else to get repaired, especially the attic dormers. Mark got a new ladder that could reach to the back dormer from the old deck, but the deck is now gone and the porch is where it used to be, and anyways even a bunch of the 2nd floor windows would be hard for us. The hosting thing made me kind of leery of of  getting up-sold, so I went and looked at all the screens and found 6 that need repaired, plus the 2 attic ones maybe, and put blue tape on them. I think there’s only a possibility of four more, from the windows at the front of the house.

In cooking, a few disappointments, a few good things. I made some date bars Thursday and let the crumble mixture get too mixed, so it could not be sprinkled on top, only blobbed.

Sunday I tried out Smitten Kitchen’s mom’s apple cake, even bought a non-stick angel food cake pan for it, and it’s good, but I don’t love it. She says it gets better as it sits, more custardy. In the cut picture, you can see it has kind of a thick crust. We ate it Sunday night for dessert with ice cream, and I was hopeful it’d get more interesting by the time I had a slice for breakfast Monday but instead I just cut the crust off, ate the middles, and composted the crust.

The best thing I made was the little pumpkin buns, recipe testing for my Thanksgiving breads class coming up on Al’s birthday. I made them Friday afternoon, and took some to the farmers market when I went to sell cookbooks, and everyone loved them.

And oh yea, way last week I made my pumpkin cranberry muffins as streusel-topped bars and a couple of muffins, and although they were good, Mark and Pia were not too interested in eating them so I gave them away to my fellow food pantry volunteers last Tuesday and one day for breakfast I ate the tops of the last two muffins and composted the stumps, thinking of Elaine on Seinfeld.

On Sunday I made Linda Brick’s (Emma’s mom, one of Jasper’s other grandmas, the others are me and Cheri, Al & John’s dad’s wife) whole grain pancake, grancakes. The first three I didn’t really have the pan hot enough, but the later ones came out great. I also got the bacon a little too dark – extra crispy. The way my mom liked it. But we went to hear John Scalzi at the Book Fest, and when we got back I ate the last two pancakes with the last strips of bacon as a sandwich, and it was perfect, didn’t even need extra butter or syrup. And Scalzi was very funny. This cooking experiment reminded me of watching the Elora’s Dad episode of Reservation Dogs, where her dad, played by Ethan Hawke, actually says to her, now that he’s got three more kids after her, “Well, you never get the first pancake right”.

I have lots of squash in the house at the moment – ’tis the season – and I was thinking I’d like to make some kind of pumpkin cookie. This recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction sounded good, so I gave it a try. She said the cream cheese icing doesn’t get hard, so I used the glaze from Maida Heatter’s alpine rocks (that I also made recently and they were completely satisfying, and I reminisced about how I used to make them more when the kids were younger back on Birch Ave. and I liked them better and ate more of them than the kids did). Pia’s friend that she’s been spending a lot of time with eats gluten free, so I thought what the heck, use the gluten free flour. And you can’t really tell, but I can tell. It’s a feeling on the backs of my teeth when I eat a cookie. Interestingly this recipe said the cookies, like the applecake, are better the next day and I think they are – but there’s still that back of the teeth feeling.

Oh, and jeez, here I am finishing this post on this free Tuesday, when I should be writing up the recipes for Sunday … but, maybe I’m not wasting my time too much:

First, I took a long bike ride to give a carton of the date bars to volunteers at the food pantry, after I realized I don’t go there at all this week, because Thursday is WLA. Going to be a supportive retired person, my former next door office mate is the program chair, and because it’s right here in town. I also dropped off a few donations, like a jar of applesauce I bought for making the grancakes (see above) but since I didn’t make them the first time I planned to, back when Rach was here we were going to have breakfast for dinner on the Sunday night after Pia and I went to Tipi’s gleaning day and brought home the kittens, I’ve had time to make applesauce and used that. And a bottle of Frank’s Buffalo wings hot sauce that’s been in the closet for awhile but not out of date, and some Annie’s granola bars now we’ve discovered Pia prefers Cliff.

Then, I met Mark for coffee and we got there at exactly the same time, him doing his walk and me my bike ride, so that was kind of cool.

I also managed to get an appointment for both me & Mark to get the Covid booster and flu shots at the same time. I messaged my primary care and asked if they knew when we might be able to get the Covid boosters, and they said I could make an appointment now because I’m over 65. But GHC’s phone system seemed to be on the blink, neither the central scheduling number nor the main member services number would connect. Finally I dialed the talk to a nurse number and selected go to reception from their phone tree and that worked. I was inspired to track it down because last night Colbert, who cancelled a bunch of shows because he had Covid, said that he and his wife had been traveling and she got the booster and he did no, and he got sick and she did not.

Back in September, the high school cross country team announced that someone’s mom was collecting used running shoes to be recycled. I bagged up about six pairs, and Pia tried taking them to school but ended up not being able to connect with the kid, so the shoes have been hanging out in the garage for a few weeks. Until today when I biked the bag of shoes over to Moving Shoes. In the weird 77° on October 24th heat.

And, even though I was grumpy Thursday, it was Jasper’s 11 months birthday and he seems to have started off happy.

And this time I’ll close with cats.

OK time to go work on those recipes for Sunday.