A Girl...

Year of the Swine

Despite the fact that I'm no longer the whirl on the merry-go-round I used to be, you're still here. Looking at my stats, it seems a lot of you were even here yesterday, choosing to spend the three-day presidential weekend checking in on an unchanged, (temporary) nosedive of a blog instead of, oh, eating carrot cake and watching both Parent Traps and both Chocolate Factorys. What are you? Canadian?

As for me, I did not read blogs or update my own blog but instead, yep, ate carrot cake and watched both Parent Trapss and Chocolate Factorys. Also, I baked. Yes, baked, as in dipped a wary toe into the waters of the culinary pseudoscience of pastry crafting. Apparently having carrot cake Saturday afternoon (for Katrina's birthday) and Sunday night (as an excuse to get out of the house for the first time that day (9 p.m.)) did not sate my need for sweets, and so Monday afternoon while Simon and his bandmate played pyschedelic gospel music in the front room (Simon has a new (used) Hammond XK2 with an amp so big it has a smaller amp orbiting around it; I don't want to talk about it), I made a dozen delicious creampuffs--from scratch!--and six badly misshapen eclaires, which, hello! impressive! now where is my cordon bleu and soufflé hat?

I also managed to make my mom's "surprise" potatoes on Sunday, which was a feat to behold considering I did it with absolutely no supervision and also no prior experience. I've been in the vicinity of my mom making surprise potatoes dozens and dozens of times over the years, but I'd never really thought to pay attention or, um, help, so I was pretty much winging it. Suffice it to say, I learned by "making my own mistakes" (don't forget to season the potatoes when they're mashed; put the cheese on at the very end), but I also came out the other end with something both presentable and edible and, being that I made enough for six hungry hungry hippos, we got three whole meals each out of my effort. Hooray!

In other extended weekend news, it was seventy degrees on Saturday and I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. It's been a very dry but excruciatingly, unforgivingly frigid winter and I'm not sad to see it go, not even a little. Something I am not sad to see return with warmer weather, however, is the street fair of insanity that becomes our block on weekend evenings. The people in the apartment building across the street (remember them last Chinese New Year?) set up a grill and folding chairs, their kids play soccer in the street and only move v e r y s l o w l y when cars try to pass, and, of course, there's mariachi music with that damnhellfucking tuba that I can hear even when I hide in the back bedroom with a pillow over my head. Adding to the festive air pollution was also eighty-two rounds of Chinese firecrackers for the New Year (oink!) and women screaming bloody murder during the Sunday afternoon rumble during which I'm truly honestly suprised no one was killed or at least seriously maimed. Of course, by the time the police sped by, the streets were empty of the two dozen men, boys, girls, and women who were beating the everloving snot out of each other outside our front window. I could hear them with a pillow over my head too.

Finally, last night we went down to the Port of Oakland to stroll aimlessly because there was nothing else to do. I took some pictures of the cranes that inspired George Lucas's AT-ATs and probably blinded my viewfinder eye in the process what with the whole looking-into-the-sun-through-a-little-square-of-glass thing. I also dropped my camera in the gutter and mangled the hot shoe, so that was cool. Simon bought a new "sound recorder" last week and while at the dock got mp3 clips of the lapping water, the seagulls, several passing trains, and a jazz trio outside a club singing "You Are So Beautiful to Me" to, um, me.

Aside from the cooking, I didn't get a lot "done" this weekend. I've decided that instead of considering it a failure because I avoided all the cleaning and organizing to be done around the house, I'll chalk it up to Static Recovery from the week before and Static Preparation for the week to come. This morning I got in to work and sharpened a brand new red pencil and set to my task--mostly poetry this week, which will do me good. By the time the week is out, I'll have completed two books and a magazine, and along the way I'll be energized by having come through the best kind of three-day break: a long weekend followed by a short week. When I get home there will be leftover potatoes for dinner, more creampuffs for dessert, a handful of gummy cokes for a snack, and a handful of Simon's hand for the night.

Laughably easy recipe for creampuffs here: http://www.recipezaar.com/186892

Photos from the port here: