Verb: sap:

When you're on page three of a short story, and you've just spent half a page describing how a character walks down the street? While this may later on discover a way to be relevant, chances are your story is really out walking in search of a plot. Somewhere to go, something to be. You might want to think about that.

My traditional response, of course, is to follow my character's lead, and go for a walk. Can't do that today. I need to be in, to take receipt of my oranges. Also, and unfortunately more important, I need to be in when the cleaning ladies come, so that I can speak to them about the boys. Don't! Let! The! Boys! Out! is what I need to say. And we all know how good I am at being imperative to total strangers, oh yes.

In the meantime, trapped indoors as I am, I have been doing that traditional thing and cleaning up for the cleaning ladies. I don't suppose it'll last, but actually at the moment I quite enjoy being a houseboy. Cooking, of course (soup and a salad, perhaps, tonight; I might bake bread. Except that my hand hurts, so I might not. Lacking a live sourdough starter, I'd have to knead, and kneading may be contraindicated), but other domestic duties are also much more fun when they're for somebody else. I actively like doing laundry here, K's machines are so cool. And because I have so little stuff as yet, I can keep it ordered and put away, and feel sort of gratified. It's a brief glimpse of Other!Chaz, the minimalist version. It will of course not last, unless the sea swallows my shipping and Karen takes my credit card away, but for now, yeah. I feel in control, and I quite like it.

Though I do need a maslin pot or a stockpot for the marmalade, and, y'know. I am fighting the urge to dash down to Macy's and buy one. My ammunition for the fight is that I have one in my shipping, which will arrive in a few months' time; and that we know so many foodie types around here, there really should be someone who can lend me a big pot for a few days. And that I can't leave the house anyway, so no shopping. No.

It's just like the old days

In other news, I do keep taking photos of the boys in their new environment, only this laptop doesn't read the camera's kind of card and neither does K's Mac so the pix will have to wait until I can get a card reader.

Delayed gratification, people. It's what photography used to be about.

I know you know this already, but

I do hate waiting in for people. Especially strangers, especially strangers I have to have a conversation with. Especially when they don't turn up the minute I'm ready for them. The boys have been shut away for safety, and they hate that too. And I'm hungry, and I have that English reticence about being caught eating by people who won't be eating too. (Actually, is that English? So many of my embarrassment-behaviours are easy to dismiss as English middle-class awkwardnesses, but that may just be lazy thinking. Though it may not be irrelevant to point out that when I was a kid, we were utterly forbidden to eat in the street in school uniform. Current pupils at the same school would never credit it...)

You're never gonna stop the rain from complaining

Turtlus Interruptus! That young demon G'Kwan thought it would be funny to turn off the power strip beneath Karen's desk, which turns off the router inter alia. Also her computer, which is why I hesitated over turning it back on again, because I don't know the protocols for restarting a Mac after a powercut, and I worried about doing something wrong. As one does.

But then I wanted to talk to the internest, as one does. So.

In other news, the nice cleaning ladies came, and were nice, and didn't let the cats out. Actually the boys and I hid in the back room, where I did useful things mostly concerned with shifting stuff around, to allow access to my desk tomorrow (my desk! in America!) while the boys alternately listened at the door and stared out of the window. And then the cleaning ladies nicely went away, and left the whole house lovely; and then I scuttled up to Lucky's in the rain (Californian rain! it was all warm) to buy salad stuffs and dairy and so forth. And now I have made soup, a sort of thick pork-and-vegetable base; and I'm going to see if I can liven it up with a kind of deconstructed pesto with watercress and oil and pine nuts and parmesan. And bacon. With a green salad and marinated beets on the side, and maybe strawberry shortcake for dessert if K is up for it. Which if I was alone I would be doing none of this, none. Well, I might have made the soup. But... Yeah. It's good to have someone to cook for.

(Also my Sevilles are here, and we are negotiating for a pan.)

Good grief, Percy, I do believe you've done it!

I cannot speak to its flavour, neither to its effectiveness as an additive of soup - I must perforce leave such judgements to others - but I will tell you this: my watercress pesto is most vividly and gloriously green. Pure Green, it is: the thing itself, the essence, the distillation. That wavelength, quite unsmudged. I'd post a photo, if I only could.