Getting out of bed is so hard. I know, I know, I was just complaining about this last week, but I don’t mean to complain.
I think it’s reasonable to want to hibernate at times like this. Wintertime. When it’s cold and yucky out, and there’s only about ten minutes of actual daylight in any given day. Bears have the right idea – just curl up in a nice cozy nest, pull the blankets over your head, and snooze.
The cats really like it when I stay in bed, but the hens are less impressed. They’re outside in their coop, shouting and clucking, waiting for me to come out with my morning bucket of chopped veggies. They don’t want to hibernate, they want to have room service hurry up with the slicing and dicing. (They’d also like it if I made them a big batch of warm oatmeal, but I’m saving that for next week, which is supposed to be bitterly cold again.)
I’ve been baking – not for the hens, for us. Last year, some time around May or June, our oven stopped working. It was a good Samsung oven, but one of the computer chips didn’t want to talk to the other, and the chips were on months-long back order, so we limped along without an actual oven until our new chips came in the mail. Some months into the wait, the oven decided to lock itself, which was really stupid.
My husband’s an electrical engineer, so he swapped in one chip and that didn’t fix things, so he swapped in the other… and it remained dead. At that point, we were facing Thanksgiving without an oven, so we bought a new one. It’s fantastic: it’s got an induction stove top and a dividable oven. The stove top is so fast. We can boil water in under a minute now.
Anyway, I’ve missed baking. Fresh scones with jam and clotted cream are a thing of joy. Next, I’ll make a pizza with home-made dough. Darn it, now I’m hungry.
In book news, I’ve been chipping steadily at Kay’s next novel. Big, exciting things are getting revealed in this one and I can’t wait to see what you guys think.
I’ve also been wondering if you’d like to see some of the random super short stories I’ve written. They’re in a wide range of genres, and none of them are connected, but I’d love to share them with you. Leave a comment telling me what you think, or send me an email at joan@joangrey.com. I’d love to hear from you.