oh my, I feel a post coming on

On Sunday morning, I had to make a mad dash to the grocery store before Daughter left for work. Mr. HD had already absconded to Starbucks for the day to grade his 70-some essays, and I had some plans for my afternoon (toward subsequent plans for another day)(as it happens, today!), but I didn't have all the ingredients to go with my beautiful chicken from Faith Farm.

I came back with these.

As I was checking out, the cashier, who could be the quieter, blond sister of Flo from the old TV show Alice, handed me a dozen. "Um, thanks -- wha ... ?"

"You just look like you could use them."

I wondered fleetingly what that meant, but the fact of the roses themselves was more interesting than the question.

And then I made this ...












My first-ever omelet. Pretty, no? Four of them, actually. Breakfast burrito-inspired omelets (I was going to make breakfast burritos for lunch, and I had the chorizo defrosted and onions chopped before I realized I had no tortillas).

Ingredients: 8-10 eggs, beaten (started with 8, whisked in more as I ran out while cooking)
3 links chorizo, squoze out of casings (this task accomplished by 13-year-old boy, who had great fun likening the experience to ... well.) (I told him afterward what the casings were made from -- or at least used to be. Heh.)
oil
1 med onion
fresh spinach
butter
grated cheddar (or whatever cheese you like)

Sautee the onions in oil until soft, add chorizo and push around until browned, and keep warm. Melt butter over medium heat in a non-stick skillet, and ladle in enough eggs to cover the bottom of the pan 1/4 inch deep. When mostly set, spoon some of the chorizo mixture onto one side, sprinkle some cheese on the other, drop a little handful of spinach leaves in the middle, and fold the cheesy side over onto the other side in whatever way you can manage it (there may have been some flipping and flopping and a near-disaster), then slide the thing onto a plate, pop some salsa on the side, and serve. Lather, rinse, repeat until you run out of stuff or everyone is full, whichever comes first.

Even The Short One liked it all right.

Life is pretty good. And there has been knitting. Maybe I will post about it before more than another nine or 10 months pass.

untitled

I'm astonished that it's been seven months since my last post. I don't know what I'm doing here. I want to write. I have thoughts. I have knitting FOs and near-FOs to post. But I'm not sure this wants to be a knit blog. It'll be whatever it'll be. And it may be another seven months before I post. Anything is possible!

In the last few months, I've become almost addicted to some political blogs, trying to find people who do their homework and who think through what's going on these days with heart, brain and finely honed bullshit detector (Obsidian Wings, The Edge of the American West, some others)(pretty much pro-Obama, but not shrill) (and why did I feel compelled to add that qualifier?). (There are also a couple that are rarely if at all politically oriented, but are just fine, fine reads.) I just added them in my sidebar. Their commenters often make magnificent contributions to any given discussion, and I feel as if I'm learning a lot. On the other hand, it also causes me some stress, because I really don't have time for such. There's work, there's kids, there's knitting, there's home, there's ... so much on my mind that I don't even know who I am right now. That's fine -- it just makes it so that I don't know what the hell I'm doing here, in blogging, or what I have to contribute. I just want to. So there.

So today, what I really should do is face my taxes -- having been self-employed, I really should have done the quarterly estimated tax thing, but I couldn't get myself together to do so and of course it's biting me on the wallet. Another thing I should face is my house, which is chaos. And I suppose I will do those things. But I also want to go and purchase some herbs and plant them -- cilantro, basil, lemon verbena (ahhhhhh!) -- and I want to yank out the wild blackberry from among the azaleas out back, though I might let that wait til after tonight's rain. Should should should. Nag nag nag.

In the words of that great philosopher, The Short One: "I can't find my shoes, and I can't find my candy. I'd much rather find my candy."

Here's to finding both.

just thinkin'

... about how surreal it would be to be George Bush, and have all these really smart people thinking about you SO MUCH, burning so many calories over you, writing so many words. And how surreal it is that he's hearing so little of the wisdom flying through the air at him.

Government of the people, by the ... what? Idiots? Psychopaths? ... for lining a few folks' pockets.

It's scary. But not nearly as scary as what we don't know yet.

I'll be watching Obama. Relative lack of experience, maybe, but he seems to have both a brain and a heart. A letter writer on Salon.com made a comment about how Clinton (I am hating that she's the only one perpetually called by her first name -- yes, I understand the confusion re. the other Clinton, but it's still this thing where women get referred to in text by their first names or as Mrs. [husband's first name] [husband's last name], and it annoys me. I keep wanting to call her Rodham), every time she's asked a politically loaded question, seems to have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, counseling her as to which answer will preserve electability.

I am so done with politics. And so addicted to them -- it's like watching a train wreck.

Obama, at least, seems like something new. And he can write.

for the halibut

Today I worked with a chef at a photo shoot for a piece for a magazine, and we got to talking about the process-versus-product thing. He talked about how, when he was in the local nuts-and-berries store picking up ingredients, he ran across figs and suddenly knew what he was going to do. How beautiful is that, to find a fig, and your day falls together? Passed a display of a zillion pints of blackberries and "wanted to lie down and take a bath in them."

He's at a pretty lovely place in his life. Just turned 50 and had a doc's appointment and carped about old man's plumbing and yadda yadda.

Meh. Fifty is the new 30.

Then again, I'm 43 and gimping around like I'm a hundred. This "living the life of the mind" -- i.e., sitting on my ass and writing and editing and putting out online fires -- is not living. I go home and stagger around or drive children from A to B, and sit and watch them do what they do ... .

I need a new relationship with my body. How to find it? I felt a real difference when I came back from the Galapagos -- I'd really used my body, hiking a couple miles a day, swimming (and freezing in 60-degree water -- surely that burned significant calories?), and I did feel fine. Ate perhaps a little too well. But I MOVED. And I lived.

I need to live differently. I'd like to live better.

Push that boulder up the hill.

...

oh yeah. That's real hopeful. So, back to where I started: Process. Being. Doing.

Hep.

Turned the heel on the sock, and the fit looks like it's going to be beautiful.

Words are too small

Sometimes I feel as if I have too much to say to say anything at all. So I should just shut up.

I went here:













and saw this


(yes, it's tortoise porn! Super Diego, at the Darwin Research Center, being Super with a capital S.)
And I broke a toe photographing this:



or maybe it was this one:


...I don't know, I don't care. (It's my third or fourth time breaking a toe, there's nothing you can do, it's no big deal.) I went to the Galapagos for 8 days, first week of July. I'm not quite back yet. There was knitting -- a toe-up sock, a lá IK summer 07 (I guess? It's the most recent IK mag I purchased, and it was warm when I did so), in Trekking, Oilslick colorway (lost ballband, but it was mostly blue with iridiscent stuff. Teal duck colors?).

A trip memory: trying to do that damn something-or-other cast-on, and making more than a dozen attempts, at least six on the plane from Miami to Quito, during which I discovered a horrific miscount, then the other half-doz in the Quito airport the next morning, waiting for the flight to Galapagos; apparently, I endlessly entertained one of my future boatmates with all my bad, bad faces.

You know, I'm not sure where that sock is, now.

The thing is, I had great fun telling people, before I left, that I was going to the Galapagos. And then I came back, and I still don't really much want to talk about it.

Eight days in wonder.

can I post now?

I noticed a while back that Blogger had gotten this new Google account thing going, and it was an option, and I, like, need simplicity wherever possible so I let it slide. And then tonight I don't have a choice other than to create a Google account in order to get on, and I did, and it leaves me no time before the one ridickerous TV show I allow myself in my life, and the boys need to go to bed, and I have cool pictures to post, and I'm tired of having System of a Down songs in my head at 3 a.m. ("I'm just sitting in my car and WAITing FOR my GIRllllllllll!") after having been woken up by the 6-year-old with bad dreams because his brother felt compelled to recap The Grudge to our neighbor girl within his hearing. Little toothless one was talking about it again just now before DH took him up to bed.

High hopes for tonight.

Quote from my 16-y-o daughter: "We're not being compatible today."

It is to laugh.

So ...

... my snow-capped tulips survived, only to be gobbled by Squirrel Buttkin. DH saw it with his own two eyes: "I just watched a squirrel chew the heads off our tulips."
...I can't post photos of said tulips, because my laptop is fried. Under warranty, and backed-up, but fried nonetheless.
...I'm in my house with no family members within 100 miles of me. This would be a beeyootiful thing, except that
...I'm sick.
...bleh.