kuntrywife, live from the kitchen

It’s one of those mornings…Blase is performing tonight at the Community Center. He’s opening for a musician from Berlin. I am doing a little performance of my own which entails baking 8 loaves of rosemary-garlic bread  to be fed to event-goers this evening. My oven only has one rack which makes this a little bit funny. You bread bakers know that busy yeast waits for no oven space… so the timing of these promised loaves is tricky. I had it all planned out, including bringing rising loaves to high school with me today to bake in the kitchen trailer oven while I work.

My first glitch this morning was running out of flour. I had already started proofing the yeast so I needed to secure more flour ASAP. I called a couple of neighbors at a pretty ungodly hour for those without children (8 am) but yielded no answers and certainly no flour. I was able to launch four loaves and set the oven to preheat before loading up the girls to get Ossian to school. Oops… forgot to pump milk for Nola first. I hurled the pump onto the couch, hooked the apparatus up to one side while nursing Nola on the other. Though pumping was never fun with one kid, it has become nearly un-doable with two. Ossian and Nola love to play with the pump while I’m rushing to eek out a few ounces. They take turns pulling out the tubing, shaking the receptacle and trying to pull the suction funnel off of my breast. It would be hilarious if it weren’t so frustrating. I managed a few ounces despite the breast pump mutiny and buckled the girls into their snack crumb filled car seats.

I was a bit behind schedule but nothing I couldn’t make up with some speed-vacuuming and clutter hiding later…. I am also trying to excavate our mess to prepare for guests arriving tonight. Childless guests always muster up a different standard in me – one that requires toys to be put away, dirty diapers to be hidden, and surfaces to be visible. Ossian began a cool new project this morning. She was “making a fire” which she felt required her to wash a lot of our firewood in the bathroom sink before stacking it in the middle of the living room. These kind of natural events make cleaning an elusive goal. How do you clean when things are always moving around and infinite messes are continuously created in the name of child development?

Ok.. so we made it into the car and nearly to the bridge when the car stalled out. I knew it was either bad biodiesel or thick biodiesel that hadn’t gotten to warm up enough from last night’s frost. That could be another post. Miraculously, at that moment, Blase drove by. We flagged him down and he pushed the car over the crest of the hill onto Mattole Road so I could coast downhill, across the river and into Rick and Tamar’s driveway where, I hoped, the morning sun would warm my chunky fuel and release me to continue scurrying through my overloaded schedule before heading to work at 11:30. The oven was on at home, Ossian was an hour late for school, I was out of flour, the mess was likely breeding at the house without my intervention, I had to be at work in 2 hours, and my car would not start. The clock was definitely ticking.

I won’t bore you with the logistical details except to inform that I am now at home, 1.25 hours later. Ossian is at school, 2 loaves of golden bread are cooling on the counter, two are maturing in the oven, and two more are on the runway. My car still lies dormant a couple of miles away. Nola is asleep on my back. The mess is still here in all its glory. And I am blogging as though I have not a care in the world. That ends now. Time to collect orphan socks, abandoned jammies, scattered puppets, unstacked blocks, cascading books, misguided shoes covered with mud, belligerent laundry piles (STILL NO SEARS GUY), discarded snack bars, stray dishes, and dust bunnies and get this show on the road. I’ve got 15 minutes before I leave for work and our guest arrive in 8 hours. Just another day in the mundane and unpredictable life of the Kuntrywife.