homemakerey

Days ago I invited someone to dinner by phone message and took out some chicken and pastry dough with the assumption I'd hear back one way or the other. No response. (I'm so disillusioned with males right now.) So tonight I've been cooking up a storm to deal with the plethora of defrosted poultry I find myself with. Unfortunately this comes at the same time as the humidity from the downpour that is making my house feel the hottest it's felt in the last year.

I'd planned to trial a new chicken pot pie recipe with some pastry dough I made a few months ago. (I'd been holding out using it all in anticipation of pie season.) With the clear (silent) sign that I am no longer friends with this person, I now have a few servings of the slightly overseasoned pot pie (I never manage to overseason anything, so I'm not sure how this happened. It's still pretty tasty, though) to last me into next week.

I've also been meaning to make a Jamie Oliver chicken-in-milk recipe that sounded pretty awesome. I lacked a chicken with bones, so fudged the process and hoped for the best. (Actually, I accidentally threw in the rosemary that was meant for another recipe in my haste to season. Oops.) It actually tastes quite nice, almost coconut milk-y, which is surprising and unexpected. It will be better once it's soaked up more of the milk gravy that smells so good. It's a good thing I love leftovers.

Right now I'm waiting for the rosemary lemon loaf to finish baking. Really it was supposed to be a rosemary loaf, but I thought the lemon zest would taste lovely with the rosemary. It's very puffy and cracky in the oven right now, and the smell is nice. I'm somewhat dubious it will work out because it's a Euro recipe and I lack a kitchen scale; my conversions are probably off since various sites gave various conversions, none the same. If ever I get a job it will be one of the first things I buy. (Also on the list is some sort of mixer for bread dough and getting my serger serviced.)

I think I would have been an excellent 1950s homemaker. I just lack the foundation garments to make the dresses look amazing.

finally

When it rains, it pours.

Finally the sky opened up and it rained. The concrete was warm under my feet as the cool rain hit it. I walked back and forth up and down my driveway, splashing my feet, watching the drops fall from the sky and rooftop into the quickly forming puddles. I tried to stop the rivers from flowing into the storm drain, tried to divert it like a dam, to no avail. The smell of paint from the freshly painted deck above is hidden under the smell of moisture. I'm hoping for drop marks in the paint, revenge on my landlord for choosing today to paint. The air smells heavy and warm, mouthfuls of moist air with every intake of breath. My K-Way is soaked, still dripping from the moments in the thick of it. The brightness of the evening prevents the count from lightning to thunder, but the lessening of rain and opening of sky suggests the moment is over almost as quickly as it began.

summer foraging

One of the nicest days I had last summer was spent berry picking in the forest with my friend Sara. Then, we spotted wild cherries, ate thimble berries off the bushes, had a bento lunch on a patch of grass and picked enough huckleberries for a few cakes. We'd been talking for ages about organising another berry picking excursion and yesterday the berries were ripe enough to make it happen.

We headed to the botanical garden at UBC so she could get some berries identified that she picked and planned to make jam with at her friends' house in OK Falls. We walked back toward campus near the park; a fence kept us out of the terrain. We immediately spotted wild blackberries and I started picking them, just to see how many I could get. I got a few, probably about 1 1/2 cups. These are much smaller and sweeter than the Himalayan blackberries that invasively took over parks all around the city. (Not that I'm complaining about being able to pick blackberries in public parks.) We eventually made it onto a path through the park and started picking huckleberries.

When I was a kid we went camping often in the summer. At the time feeling like forced labour, we'd sit in a boat for hours trying to catch rainbow trout and then tromp up and down steep inclines looking for huckleberries. We'd each be passed a massive ice cream pail with a handle and told we wouldn't go back to camp until the bucket was full. But we'd reap the rewards of our hard work all winter, with huckleberry pies and huckleberry muffins. The ones we picked were a dark purple, low to the ground with small, firm leaves.

The ones on the west coast are significantly different than the ones I remember from my childhood. These are on high shrubs and pinkish red, slightly translucent. We picked for hours, each filling 3/4 of a massive handled yogurt container (1.75L). One of the biggest surprises for me was finding one wild blueberry bush; I picked every last one from it! We eventually made our way toward the bus, picking along the way, until a man walking his dog mentioned that the parks people fine you if you're picking berries from the park. He used to pick mushrooms and was told it wasn't allowed in a provincial park. I was dubious but mildly fearful, yet still walked away with a whole slew of berries without guilt.

The berries are all safely stored in my freezer. With the blueberries and rhubarb I got last week and the orange olive oil cake I baked on Thursday, my freezer is filling up. Hopefully these berries (and the pending blackberries I hope to get in August) will see me through the dark days ahead.

downer

The last few weeks have been more difficult than I've let on. This month has sucked and the suck doesn't seem to be lessening.

My grandfather's death was expected, yes, but it has still left me in a state. I can't go into it without falling into a significant depression. Suffice it to say things will never be the same again.

Family issues remain. I am jealous of people who have families that function, that have siblings that actually answer the phone and want to see them.

I also discovered my rent will be going up 4% in October and possibly more since my landlord measured the kitchen to replace the counters and cupboards. I could be paying another $70 per month and another 4% next April. I need to figure out a longterm solution because this is stupid.

Today was really the topper of the month. After talking just yesterday about the possibility of being a front runner for a position at work, today came word that funding was cut and there would be a series of bumps that will likely eliminate the position I'd hoped for. Before I left work yesterday I spoke with someone and expressed my worry that something would happen to make full-time work further out of my grasp; she said I shouldn't worry. Today... she actually called me to her office to express her shock that less than 24 hours after our conversation I had a reason to worry. Obviously anything could happen, but right now I feel like I've been kicked enough.

Uncle. Seriously.

Karma better be super awesome pretty quick. It would be really nice to feel like something is going right in my life.

I don't really know what to say anymore. For the longest time, writing has been one of the few ways for me to actually delve into what's going on with me. It's been kind of cathartic, putting stuff out there so I don't need to deal with it in my head all the time. But on my way home today I didn't see the point of writing about the stuff that's been going on with me, the stuff that's swimming in my head, drowning my voice. It doesn't matter what I write because it doesn't change anything. I'm still as neurotic and self-doubting and hopeless as I ever was, so what's the point?

loss

He was gone shortly after my last post. I now have no living grandparents and it makes me feel a little lost in the world.

waiting

When I talked to my mom last week, I suggested I visit soon because Mom was sounding kind of down. Yesterday I bought a bus ticket to visit my parents next weekend and was looking forward to a couple of days with them on my own.

Tonight I called my mom to let her know, so they can pick me up from the bus. She said she wasn't sure that would work out.

I talked to her on Sunday, the same day she had spoken to my grandfather, who was kind of disoriented and garbled into the phone. This is why she sounded down, the worry about her father. She got a call from my aunt today that he's still really disoriented and that we should probably brace ourselves for the end.

Really, I've been bracing for this since Omi passed away. I've come to terms with this. None of us thought he'd make it through the summer. Still, I hate waiting for the inevitable.