Mom & Me Five Archive

...which is good, because today, which is supposed to be our second snow day, is sunny. Cold, true, but sunny. Clear. Bright. I have the blinds drawn. We got absolutely no snow. Just that sleet I mentioned. What a bust, considering that, otherwise, we had a wonderful snow day.
    Yesterday was Egg Nog/Dried Tart Cherry/Toasted Almond Bread day. I baked each of two loaves separately, in case I wanted to change anything from the first to the second batter. Turns out I didn't. I'm not sure if I'm going to publish this recipe. The only changes that my version incorporates are the addition of the cherries and toasted almonds. Otherwise, it's not my recipe. Probably, I should target it on the web. Hope I can find it [I printed it out some years ago].
    It was also Musical Day, Mom's decision. When I asked her what she wanted to do while she was supervising the cooking, she said, "Oh, something I can sing to, something I can dance to." Mary Poppins [the band arrangements and theme follow through are irresistible] and The Sound of Music [we saw this one recently so I'm a little tired of it, but I do like watching Christopher Plummer] provided nicely. She napped between the two. Late in the evening, we started a third, one that I like, too (not that I don't like the others, I just don't like to watch them as much as Mom does), Victor/Victoria, but, fifty-three minutes into it, Mom faded. I was done baking by that time and had settled down on the floor next to her. It was after midnight. Clearly, bedtime. She made me promise to remind her about watching the movie again today, so I think, today, it will be Pumpkin/Cranberry/Pecan and Molasses Spice Bread. Maybe I can squeeze the Honey Bear Brownies in. They're quick and easy. Then, our baking supplies will be just high enough to serve the minimal requirements of everyday cooking.

    Ah, she was just up, went to the bathroom. She looked bleary so I asked if she was planning on "getting all the way up".
    She dropped her head and shook it. "I'm headed back in."
    I checked her bed, changed two of four pieces of bedding, disinfected the urine spot (even though healthy urine is sterile, I'm never sure how "healthy" Mom's urine is). I told her what time it is and asked her how long she wanted to sleep.
    "Oh, a couple of hours."
    "Okay, that'll be around 1300. Your light went out at 0100 this morning. Good choice."
    She beamed, comically.
    I'm not sure whether she'll take it all the way through to 1300. She seemed pretty alert, for being headed back to bed. Oh, yeah, better take out the breakfast meat to thaw. Hold on...

...there. Back to yesterday. So, I multi-tasked with furious satisfaction all day; baking, supervising the supervisor, keeping up with the movies, working on the alternate label index here (still long publishing periods, despite having been halved)...I was so impressive I managed to multi-task my way into burning the tuna/jalapeno jack melts I made for dinner last night.
    In case you're wondering, we haven't tried the Egg Nog loaves, yet. As usual, I've seen to it that we've observed The Time of Mellowing. I was planning on trying it for breakfast but I tantalized Mom with the promise of earlier sweet, quick bread if she stayed up, specifically the Egg Nog Bread, and she said, "Is that the stuff we had yesterday?"
    No, that was the banana bread. So, we'll probably have banana bread for breakfast.

    Anyway, this time through, the labeling and indexing is easy and doesn't require reading anymore rigorous than lightly scanning posts for the markers I inserted when I was cataloguing for The Mythical Table of Contents. I'm pleased with the categories and applications I devised, so I'm using those as label names in Blogger. The page set up is slightly different, but it almost achieves the objectives of my initial Table of Contents plan.
    Although I'm not required to read the material word for word, this time, I'm so familiar with it that scanning usually enlightens me to the gist of any particular passage. I'm thinking that I might have been somewhat less inhibited "back then", a couple of years before some of my visitors made themselves known and I became conscious of the identities of some of them. I'm not sorry about the inhibition, as conversations develop between posts and people that were intriguing, sometimes inspiring. But, lately, since I've been isolating myself, as, it appears, have others, well, one of my visitors commented that my posts seemed somehow different. I can't remember the exact words, but they went to both style and substance. It was a derogation, simply a mention. At the time this was mentioned, I'd begun to label the posts here with the old method. Although I wasn't conscious of having noticed differences in my approach to journaling over the years, I'm not surprised to hear that they exist. I also wasn't, on that day, consciously aware of differences between what I am writing and what I wrote three years ago. But, I realized almost immediately to what my reader was alluding. I have been writing differently in the past couple of weeks. I've been writing like I used to. Weird. Interesting.

    It's Saturday, but it seems like Sunday. Think I'll put together another loaf of quick bread and bake it while I decide whether to do more multi-task labeling here.
    Later.