Blogging just hasn't been happening lately. Things have been a little weird and off-kilter since before Christmas and I'm still trying to pick up the bits.
The kitchen project at our house has officially gone into "I'm pretending it isn't there" limbo. In fact I didn't go to the house for the holiday. I cooked a mean Capon at the party on Christmas Eve (here's the recipe; I highly recommend it and it would work well for chicken, too). But in the end I couldn't handle the mess, and the acquaintances, in addition to all the other weirdness that was going on. Which in itself made for a strange holiday, such that Christmas was sort of a sad non-event this year. The decorations never made it out of the box.
Nor did we get to the house over the New Years long weekend. We were staying with friends in Ithaca and it was so much nicer and easier to stay there lying in front of the woodstove and playing with their adorable puppy (I want a doggy!!).
Nor did we get to the house the following weekend because we were invited to a party and P was getting ready to leave for France. . . . nor did I get to the house last weekend because the weather sucked and I didn't want to deal with driving alone in bad weather. Reading this post reminded me how I used not to be such a wimp, growing up as I did in Vermont where one had to drive unless it was REALLY REALLY bad, or go nowhere for 5 months at a time. But then we had 4-wheel-drive cars and snowtires, too.
I swear I'm finally going this weekend, to make sure everything is more or less okay, to finally clean up a bit if I can, to finally finish painting the window in the dining room, to maybe do some laundry, to find the trash can which is probably at the neighbors' or in the next county or the middle of the road unless a kind soul put it back. I can't believe we haven't been to the house for almost a MONTH and left the trash can out; it boggles the mind. But it wasn't supposed to be a month. . . . I'm sure the mice have enjoyed sleeping in the bedding that was left on the beds upstairs too. Again, I was supposed to go pack stuff up. But I didn't. So there it is.
I haven't been cooking over-much of interest, besides this soup that I discovered in our Ithaca friends' current favorite cookbook. I made it without cream, and I think I added a potato, and it was very good. I have more in the freezer to eat maybe this weekend after I shovel my way into the driveway up at the house. . . .
I have two countem sets of plane tickets to fun places in my possession (one to a beach hovel in the Bahamas for a month from now!! I better get gallons of suncream as I haven't been out much at all! Working out at the gym, and all. . . . and another one to Paris the following month for the Ithaca friends' wedding celebration).
But there looms over everything the Current Impasse. Which is the same one that threatened, or maybe just began, late last summer. It is making it hard for me to get much of anything done, it's getting in the way of everything and making me miserable in fact. What's to be done? Only time will tell, I'm afraid. And alas with my current world-view the blog is the first thing to go.
