Isn't it self explanatory?
It’s been a long, busy, wonderful weekend, and as much as I’d like to write about it all right now, I just can’t. I have to go to sleep.
So, instead of writing, I’ll leave you with this lullaby: Hyla’s violin recital from earlier today. I tried out her little video camera to film her performance and the video quality is pretty poor, but at least the sound comes through okay.
Sweet dreams.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgjyGPOEMeA]
It only took a week to remember the camera.
I might go back tomorrow with a zoom lens and try to get some shots of those adorable snouts up close.
Most week days, Michael and Hyla bundle into the car together around 8.15 in the morning and head off for school and then work. Gryfe and I stand at the door and wave to them until the car leaves, then I get my tea and we go downstairs to my office. I sit down at my desk, and Gryfe settles into his dog bed beside me to begin his daily work of chewing on a toy before passing out for his two-hour nap.
This morning started with torrential rain, and then the valley filled with fog and a steady drizzle. It felt dreary and cold and like a good day to stay under the covers with a good book. But I had a lot of work to do.
I tuned the radio to NPR, looked out my window to the bleak November view, and then this StoryCorp story, told by Gregg Korbon and his wife Kathryn, came on the air.
Maybe it was the moody weather, or the fact that Brian was just a little kid, or the detail about the note he left on his door (as the mother of a note writer, this really struck a chord), or just the reminder of how quickly things you think are forever can go away, or my sympathy for his parents. Or all of that.
Whatever it was, it made me so completely sad for a time, and then so overwhelmingly grateful for my family, my healthy little girl, my mug of tea, my work before me, my dreary view of November hills.
I know I’m far from the first to observe this, but sometimes those SPAM email subject lines inadvertently make cool little poems. Here are three lines that just appeared in my SPAM box, in this order:
When asked what he would prefer
There was no possibility of taking a walk that day
She’s in the window seat
From Hyla’s forthcoming book of drawings and comics.
The other day, I publicly admitted that I used to listen to the Carpenters and Meat Loaf. But if you looked through my album collection from the time I was about 12 until, well, until I started to buy CDs, the name dominating my collection was Gordon Lightfoot’s.
I know it’s not cool to love Gordon Lightfoot, but I do. It wasn’t cool when I was in high school, either, but I really didn’t care.
I loved the depth of his voice, the distinct guitar style, the folksy (yes, sometimes hokey) lyrics. I loved his name. I loved that he was from Orillia, a small city close to the marina where my family and I often visited during summers in Ontario. I loved him for his “Canadianess” in the same way I loved Burton Cummings and The Guess Who. Even though I wasn’t a Canadian citizen, I felt such a close kinship to Canada and my Canadian relatives, I felt like Gordon was one of my people.
I don’t listen to much Gord these days, but I have many of his reissues on CD, and there are days when no other music seems so right to me. So you can bet that today, after I heard on NPR that it was his birthday, his songs have been running through my head.
No, his voice isn’t strong anymore, and I doubt I’d ever go seem him perform in concert again, but he keeps on singing at 71, and I think that’s pretty cool.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFDoL8SGlX4]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm9F1PsyKto]
I just noticed I’ve made it half way through NaBloPoMo as of last night’s post.
And, in an odd coincidence, I’ve also made it just past the half-way point of the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge in the last week, having just completed bread #23 (Pane Siciliano) out of 43 total breads.
This feels good. I feel like I’m really in the swing of both. Of course, that feeling could easily change tomorrow when I feel too swamped to write, or find I have nothing at all to say. And, I have to be honest here and tell you I’m pretty much dreading making the next bread, Panettone, because it’s a slightly complex recipe and I don’t really like Panettone. (If anyone wants it, I’ll be happy to ship it anywhere in the continental United States.)
Panettone aside, I’m enjoying these new habits, and I hope I continue both after the official challenges are complete. Speaking of which, did you know that Peter Reinhart has a new bread book out?
I’ve been meaning to write about our apple cider making experience for weeks now, but it’s late on a Sunday evening and I had part of a beer with dinner, so the complete writeup will have to wait at least for another day, but I’ll share something cool with you now.
In our kitchen, we have two 5-gallon jugs (“carboys”) filled with cider. As the cider ferments, it throws off tiny bubbles of gas. For the first several weeks, those bubbles came out of the tops of the carboys, through rubber tubes, and into a bucket of water. We’d hear little bubbling sounds all day long.
This weekend, Michael “racked off” the cider in the carboys, which means he siphoned off the cider into clean containers so as to separate the cider from the “lees” (the residual particles from the apples that had collected at the bottom of the carboys). After that, he replaced the rubber tubes with little gas traps attached to the carboy caps. Since fermentation is slowing down, these little gas traps are now sufficient for letting the little bubbles escape.
We check the carboys every day to watch the bubbles, anxious to see continuous activity because we really want 10 gallons of hard cider, not cider vinegar, at the end of the fermentation process. So, now that we can’t hear the bubbling the way we could when the gas was escaping into the bucket of water, we just stand and watch — and smile when we see that little bubble escape. It’s alive!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-uzQNaRQxU]