Adulting

The Long Back Yard.

I got up early, convinced I'd be shoveling, because we didn't have so much snow yesterday. But when I got up, the drive had been plowed and the steps cleared.

Best plowguy ever.

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Oh, let's see -- Friday?

I guess we'd better go with Friday. Sunny and colder'n . . . yeah. -4F-feels-like-minus-11F. That'll do.

Breakfast was the left over half of the yam from yesterday's lunch, fried, with a side of cottage cheese. Right now, I'm eating a chocolate chip cookie with my second cup of tea, because I Am An Adult. Lunch will be (some of) the now-defrosted chicken breasts and, oh, maybe stuffing. Because I Am An Adult.

Sarah is due in about half an hour.

Speaking of viewpoints -- yes, yes, but bear with me. It's a craft thing that really interests me. I live for the scenes in our own work where someone meets Miri or Val Con, or both of them, and gives the reader their conclusions drawn on what they think they're seeing. It never gets old. (Oh. Or Shan. I Love It when people tell us about Shan.)

That said, on Wednesday, the New Yorker calendar served me up a cartoon of Santa speaking to a herd of reindeer, or possibly to the one in the foreground, with the big nose. And Santa is saying: "Remember! No matter how different you are, if you prove yourself useful, you can still earn the privilege of being forced to work with your bullies."

I didn't get it at first, because brain/morning/cats, but yanno? That retelling is genius. Genius.

And it also reminds me of something I heard on the internet not too long ago -- paraphrasing here, "I have never wanted to trade lives with anyone who bullied me."

So! Today is about doing Real Life Chores, which is a bore, but I need to cope. Because I Am An Adult.

Who else is Adulting today?

Mutant Seedy Bread recipe

Answering the multiple calls for the recipe of the dense, seedy bread I made yesterday.

Rolanni's Mutant Seedy Bread

1 cup lukewarm milk

1/4 cup of (the recipe I'm riffing off of calls for orange juice, but I only had pineapple, so...)

1/4 vegetable oil

3 tablespoons of (dark) maple syrup -- you can probably use molasses; I had maple syrup

2 teaspoon of yeast

1.25 teaspoons salt

3 cups whole wheat flour (I had King Arthur Golden Wheat)

1/3 cup of King Arthur whole grain mix

Mix everything together -- it'll be sticky and damp, that's a feature -- scrape it into a WELL-GREASED loaf pan, let it rise for 60-90 minutes (today it took 90 minutes for my dough to rise). Preheat the oven to 350. Bake the loaf for 40-45 minutes (today, mine wanted the whole 45 minutes), putting an aluminum foil tent over it after the first 20 minutes.

Here's what mine looked like when I was done: