Priorities: I haven't them

Seriously, I never have been able to prioritise well. I've been known to spend two months writing a novella that would only ever pay me five hundred quid. And the same habits apply outside my professional life, which is of course one reason why I'm never properly prepared for anything, and always end up having to busk it.

As witness: as you all know, tomorrow is Speak Like Stephen Maturin, Cook Like Preserved Killick Day. People are coming. I am not ready, the house is not ready, the kitchen is not ready. Nothing is ready. And what am I doing about that?

This morning, I picked two and a half kilos of cherry tomatoes (and barely cleared the fringes of the wildness that is the tomato garden, but that's another story). Tomatoes do not currently feature in my plans for tomorrow. They are now sitting around in vast bowls taking up space I can ill afford.

This afternoon I propose to clear and clean out the fridge. Like the tomato-picking, it is a generically useful action and it does need to be done, but. There are almost certainly actions that are needier and more urgent.

Also, this whole Day is a divagation, when I should be preparing for my green-card interview early on Monday morning (in some ways, I suspect it's a device to make my mind off the scary; I don't often brush up against the formal & official this way, and it makes me nervous*).

However, whatever. Today I will mooch around doing this and that. Tomorrow friends will come, and I will drink quietly all day and cook and stress and it'll be fine. The day after that ... will happen. And then the rest of my life. There's champagne in the fridge; we're keeping at least one bottle of that for Monday. Whatever happens. I love my wife, and I'm taking nothing for granted.

*and sometimes I suspect that very nervousness of being a device, to distract my attention from the work I should seriously have been doing and haven't much. Chaz is apparently fractal: under every anxiety lies another, one layer deeper and otherwise alike.

The fridge: shelf the first

We are actually very good about saving leftovers, rarely throwing away anything edible after a meal.

What we're not so good at, apparently? Actually eating those leftovers within a reasonable or hygienic timespan. *throws away dark, dangerous and foreboding post-foodstuffs, frequently with attached cultures rising towards a definition of civilisation*

Also, I should use more of the chicken or other fats that I so scrupulously save from roasts and so forth. They'll keep a long time, but even so. I probably don't need half a dozen separate containers, each containing a finger of unidentified fat...

On the other hand, scouring the back of a deep fridge yields also delights. The salt pork I was particularly looking for (here in California, we cannot buy juniper berries anywhere local, but salt pork is to be had at Safeway). A jar of taramasalata, unopened and perfect for dipping tomorrow (Jack and Stephen must've encountered taramasalata during their Mediterranean excursions, surely...?). A carton of blueberries which I thought must have rotted, but no, they appear to have dried without harm; I have invented blueberry raisins, all unknowing. A bottle of forgotten beer! Beer is lunch! *opens beer*

If we had any ham we could have ham and eggs, if we had any eggs

Oof. If we had a proper freezer, we could probably have lived for a week off what my neglectful fridge management has just obliged me to throw away, if I were any good at all at "tonight, my dear, we shall dine from the freezer," which I'm not. In fact if we had a proper freezer I would simply fill it, as I have filled the freezer-compartment that we do have. As I said in a comment to the Mris, I am useless at saving money but spectacularly good at hoarding food. I buy stuff in case, I keep it because; I am miserly in the extreme when it comes to extracting goods from storage and consuming same. I'd rather buy another freezer and just save more and more. Because, y'know. Nuclear winter. Apocalypse. Winter is coming. So many SF writers can't all be wrong.

In other news, beer good. Please may I sit in the garden to enjoy my beer? Sit and do nothing, just for a bit, just because? It's nice out there, and I'm tired, and Karen's off at a Bardic event so I'm all on my ownsome, and yeah. I vote for book, beer, back yard. There's a reason for all that alliteration, y'know.

Oops

So I went out into the garden - and there was the grey-and-white cat from next door. Who made like he was going to run away, so I made like he should come for scritchings, so he did; and then I sat on the bench and he stayed for proper strokings; and then he jumped into my lap and settled down and did purring. Which is the first time he's been so friendly, so I lingered for a while to exchange compliments.

And when I finally had to shift him, he rolled on his back invitationally, but I am too old a hand to fall for the tummy trap, so I came indoors. Where I have two cats who have spent six months watching that cat come and go at leisure, when they can't; and now I smell of him, and oh dear. I am being very thoroughly catechised.

Am I done yet? Would you call me done?

So I have tidied out the fridge, and shopped for corned beef and smoked ham and cooked same, ready for the lobscouse tomorrow; and messages have flown back and forth, and people know where to come and are bringing some of the things I lack; and myself I plan to make lobscouse and côôôôq au vin and at least one suet pudding; and I'll bake some breads to go alongside, and after that people are on their own. I'll be the one in the corner, slumping gently as my bones give slow way to alcohol.

And now I must put things away until tomorrow, and tidy up the kitchen; and then am I done? May I stop? *pokes self, to see if he is tender*

A side-note of personal triumph

I appear finally to have used all the teaspoons in the house. Karen had a lot of teaspoons when I moved in, and I do mean a lot; and I have meted out my lifetime's use over a bare handful that were never enough; and I thought I would never get through them.

Lo.

In other news, I had thought that I was done. I had turned off the water in the yard and the heat beneath the beef, and I thought it sufficient unto the day. Then I bethought me of laundry, and started a load of towels; then I remembered about the bread. I am still determined to find a way to rise the dough overnight without its overrising, because that's the only way to be sure we have fresh sourdough for lunch; so this time I'm going to irritate it all evening and leave it in the fridge and then give it one last knead first thing in the morning, set it in the proving-basket for its final rise and see how much time it needs to warm through and get excited about things again.

So there's that. I am fiddling with bread and sipping wine and thinking about eating leftovers while m'wife chews through a feast of many courses in company with other bards (she's a judge! she's important! they will defer to her, and I'm not there to see it!). I harbour no resentments, none. I like wine, and eating leftovers, and making bread. I'm supposed to like being by myself, too, it's meant to be my nature. Especially at the back end of a social week, and before a major party. But, y'know. She's Karen and I'm Chaz, and I miss her.