The Blog With No Name

I am having foot surgery on November 13th. In a few months, when the swelling is gone and I can walk normally, I will unleash my inner Imelda on the retail shoe outlets of the world. In the shorter term, it’s beginning to sink in how much of a pain in the ass this is going to be for everyone around me, especially my poor husband, as I’m going to be immobilized for at least a week, and much-less-mobile-than-usual for much longer, during one of the busiest seasons of the church year. But the number one thing preying on my mind? How comprehensively and monumentally messy my co-workers are going to leave my desk. How sad is that. These are the same people who are going to drive me to the hospital at an ungodly hour of the morning, and check on me daily, and bring me coffee, so perhaps I’d better get over this attitude…

I’ve gotten adventurous, now that it’s bread-baking weather again. I’m attempting sourdough bread, working from the introductory recipe in Nancy Silverton’s Breads from the La Brea Bakery. Here is my starter as of a few days ago:

Today I get to take out the bundle of grapes that has been in there for ten days and start a regular feeding schedule. I should be able to start my first loaf in four or five days. Updates as events warrant!

My son and I went downtown to a city “fright night” event, he in his soldier-skeleton outfit looking quite scary. Charles and the daughter stayed home (she said it was “too cold!” to go with us). Charles and the daughter watched a Michael Myers “Halloween” movie. As a consequence, when told to go upstairs to get ready for bed, guess who was TOO SCARED? Yes, our daughter. The boy, who has moments of gallantry, eventually went upstairs with her to protect her. What a nice boy. (And what an idiotic father!)

We just spent almost two hours at the high school pool. My daughter enjoys swimming and is on a team (not a school team but it meets at the HS), and practices are invariably from 5:30 pm to 6:30 pm, which makes sitting down to a family dinner on those nights, um, problematic. The meets are invariably on Sunday mornings (!). My son’s soccer practices are also at dinner time. So far each kid is interested in one sport only. I cannot imagine what we will do when other sports, dramatics, music, etc etc start getting interesting. We are just sitting down to eat junk food at 8pm; the kids are going to bed immediately following. This cannot be healthy for them, and it makes me CRAZY. I know a woman whose daughter, a senior in high school, is doing vocal music, dance, theater, honors math and honors English. She gets home from rehearsals at 11pm and STARTS her homework. She is applying to colleges right now. Her mother says that she cries all the time. Her mother has to pass on a very attractive job offer so that she can be the family chauffeur. MADNESS. I don’t see myself handling things like this well. I fear, I fear…

My daughter has discovered pop music (the Nickelodeon version of pop music, at any rate). No, that’s not quite true, she discovered it at least a year ago. She’s discovered that she can obtain CDs and play them in her little karaoke machine, and put them on her Shuffle. I had been assuming that it was ALL CRAP, but we’ve been listening to one of her CDs in the car over the past few days, and some of the tracks are not bad. I wouldn’t class them with the Beatles or anything like that, but definitely stuff I could put on my own iPod for the morning walk. The worst part was actually admitting that I found some of it tolerable.