Creatures Great and Great
Thursday working, and then I made the 1930s peanut butter bread from Baking Yesteryear for the guys over at Warburton.
It turned out fine, just didn't get very tall, which I hate. I know quick breads don't get very tall anyway, but I don't understand why mine always seem even flatter than is typical. The smell was fantastic as you can guess (think peanut butter cookies) and Jameson was groaning about how he wanted a loaf, so I will make us one tomorrow. This time I'm throwing an egg in there, that should fluff things up.
In the evening I went for a neighborhood walk.
The sun is setting a little earlier, it can't be much earlier than usual but I'm always surprised to notice the change.
I decided to take a page from![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
summersgate's book and bring you along on my walk.
One way that you can tell it's fall is that the magnolia trees are dropping their "cones", which contain bright red berries/seeds. These seeds litter the sidewalk like little gems, or jelly beans.
Another way to tell fall is coming, is that the beauty berry bushes start doing an ombre gradient, green-to-purple.
In another week they'll be fully purple.
The oak trees are starting to drop acorns and squirrels and misc birds are taking advantage, cracking the shells with tooth or beak and eating the nuts inside. (The squirrels are eating in the trees so they can throw stuff at you)
This neighbor's sprinklers were going off, and one sprinkler head is broken. If you ever hear someone in Florida talking sarcastically about a "water feature" in their yard, this is what they mean.
Almost all community housing in Florida has sprinkler systems installed that run automatically at certain times of day whether you like it or not.
This house is very fancy. It's at the end of a cul-de-sac, and has its own gate and fence (and keypad and cameras.)
Jameson and I often dance like idiots or make silly faces at the cameras when we get here. We imagine that there's a secretive millionaire living in a fancy house hidden within this unassuming vacation rental neighborhood.
There is one large-ish lake near our house, which we always walk past hoping to see an alligator (we did once, a baby.) We have seen other wildlife like turtles, frogs, birds, and even fish jumping up to eat the bugs. Also, there used to be a snake bird who would sit on that grey drainage box regularly and overlook the lake. We called him King Of The Lake. But we haven't seen him in a long time.
And I saw many anole lizards, but when the sun is setting they are hurrying to hide from predators so I couldn't get any good pictures.
I felt kind of melancholy on this walk. Perhaps being so health-anxious lately, or recounting my parents' untimely deaths during therapy, or the plain fact that fall was my mother's favorite time of year and both my parents died within the same week of October and all of that is coming around again...maybe it's all of that. And thinking about how old I feel already at 39, because through my parents--and through hearing hundreds of heartbreaking and despairing and pain-filled calls at CapTel during the pandemic--and through this nursing home job where I take down, essentially, peoples' last words to their family and final thoughts on their lives--I can see the human timeline. Doors closing never to open again; health fading, and things diminishing, and time rolling over each of us like a glacier, inevitable and relentless, crushing us all in the end. I see the desperate effort that people have to pour into finding some positivity, anything to look forward to...some small hope or tiny moment of joy to grasp, so that they can cope with the daily pain of their bodies, or the loneliness of being abandoned because they are older. I see how hard many people have to work, emotionally, to live out their sunset days with some semblance of peace and enjoyment instead of abject terror, constant pain, or the crushing weight and bitterness of looking back and seeing far more behind than ahead.
Woof, I didn't mean to be dark. It is just reality, though. I heard it for 40 hours a week, for years.
The clock never stops ticking. The figurative glacier of time looms. So I take walks, even though it's hot and uncomfortable.
Because I can do that, now. And at some point, later, I won't be able to.
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For once I had met my 30 hour minimum on Thursday, so I didn't have to work on Friday!
But I did get up at 7:30 still, and ate breakfast, and enjoyed some "me time" before driving the hour-and-fifteen to Warburton again.
I brought the peanut butter bread and it was much appreciated.
The receptionist and some of the craftsmen from the back came out to eat some, toasted and with salted butter.
We ate and sipped coffee while they re-laquered my trombone mouthpiece. It was a good visit :)
From there I drove to The Loop which is a shopping plaza partway back.
There's a Fresh Market in there. I treated myself to their grocery store sushi and checked to see if they had gummy candy corn (they didn't but it's early), then went to the Yankee Candle in the same area because I had a buy 1/get 1 coupon and Jameson mentioned wanting a vanilla candle. After lots of sniffing, settled on a smoked vanilla (which I suspect I will like more than him) and vanilla creme brulee (which I suspect he will like more than me). Then a stop at Publix for groceries for the week.
Back home Jameson was in some mood because he had to buy a tux for Candlelight.
The hope was that they'd provide outfits...you KNOW Disney has a whole warehouse somewhere dedicated to employee uniform tuxes. But no, so his choices were to rent a tux for three separate performances (at $200 per rental) or buy one ($600) so he bought one. It's probably good to have a tux in your closet anyway, but when you've made it past the age of 40 without having to buy one I guess it's hard. I'd be mad too. That takes a huge chunk of the money he'd be making on these gigs...in fact, more than half of his pay will probably go toward the outfit for the event.
So I had him smell the vanilla candles (my predictions were correct about what he'd like) and then made the peanut butter bread again which made the house smell delicious and put him back in an "ok" mood. Poor guy.
I have to admit that I cheated on this loaf; I did two things to make it rise higher.
Thing 1: used a smaller pan!
Thing 2: added an egg!
This quick-bread recipe is from the Depression era, when some ingredients (EGGS and BUTTER) were scarce. And so innovative housewives looked in their pantries and found substitutes; in this case peanut butter, because it has both protein and fat that can take the place of eggs and butter. But peanut butter doesn't have nearly the protein content of an egg.
And this ain't the Depression. I got eggs.
We enjoyed still-warm slices with an Italian dark chocolate peach spread that I got last week using a gift card.
It was incredibly good.
In the evening we watched two episodes of Only Murders In The Building, then Jameson went to a game night with his friends and I stayed home to vacuum and practice trombone and relax (I mean, TRY to relax.)
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I woke up an absolute mess on Saturday, heart racing and very anxious.
No idea why, perhaps there was an intense stress dream?
But it took all morning to even calm partway down. Not fun.
But I felt better when Kim, the Warburton receptionist, sent these adorable pictures of Moe the squirrel enjoying a small piece of my peanut butter bread! A squirrel likes something that I made...I am proud :D
Then breakfast, then outside to finally separate out a new banana pup that's grown big enough to stand on its own.
For the first time, I had to kill the other pups. There are too many of them now, and I don't need any more banana trees especially if they're all pouring energy into making clones instead of fruit. I feel bad but that's gardening for ya.
As I was cutting off dead banana leaves, I discovered a surprise!
These are two-striped walkingstick bugs.
The female is 2.5 inches long; I was startled to suddenly be facing such a large insect.
The male is much smaller and rides on her back (which is why these are often called "devilriders".)
They are very slow-moving and do not bite, but they can squirt a stinky chemical in self-defense that can irritate your eyes.
So I was very gentle and kept my distance. It was cool to find something new! Always bring your phone when gardening :)
Back inside I goofed off and ate lunch and practiced trombone.
I get tired more quickly on the larger trombone, but hopefully that will not be an issue soon.
Jameson and I went for a dip in the pool in the afternoon, which was nice as it's still very hot here.
He went to a show with friends (over an hour away and it's a show I'm not interested in so I declined) so I watched anime and worked on Foodie Finds and drank the last of my sake.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Sunday I got up early to work.
It went fine, I think.
Trombone practice in the afternoon, now I'm really buckling down on muscle memory so I can be ultra-comfortable with the part by the time the tour starts. And then of course they'll make changes and cuts and I'll have to learn all over again :p
It was a very slow day as Sundays often are, Jameson watched the Cubs game and I got very sleepy around 3:30 and had to struggle for my last hour of work. We ordered pizza and after dinner I tried to go for a walk, but it started raining in the first five minutes so I came back. It's also getting darker significantly earlier.
I guess Tropical Storm Idalia may nip us this week?
It will be nice to get some rain.
It turned out fine, just didn't get very tall, which I hate. I know quick breads don't get very tall anyway, but I don't understand why mine always seem even flatter than is typical. The smell was fantastic as you can guess (think peanut butter cookies) and Jameson was groaning about how he wanted a loaf, so I will make us one tomorrow. This time I'm throwing an egg in there, that should fluff things up.
In the evening I went for a neighborhood walk.
The sun is setting a little earlier, it can't be much earlier than usual but I'm always surprised to notice the change.
I decided to take a page from
summersgate's book and bring you along on my walk.One way that you can tell it's fall is that the magnolia trees are dropping their "cones", which contain bright red berries/seeds. These seeds litter the sidewalk like little gems, or jelly beans.
Another way to tell fall is coming, is that the beauty berry bushes start doing an ombre gradient, green-to-purple.
In another week they'll be fully purple.
The oak trees are starting to drop acorns and squirrels and misc birds are taking advantage, cracking the shells with tooth or beak and eating the nuts inside. (The squirrels are eating in the trees so they can throw stuff at you)
This neighbor's sprinklers were going off, and one sprinkler head is broken. If you ever hear someone in Florida talking sarcastically about a "water feature" in their yard, this is what they mean.
Almost all community housing in Florida has sprinkler systems installed that run automatically at certain times of day whether you like it or not.
This house is very fancy. It's at the end of a cul-de-sac, and has its own gate and fence (and keypad and cameras.)
Jameson and I often dance like idiots or make silly faces at the cameras when we get here. We imagine that there's a secretive millionaire living in a fancy house hidden within this unassuming vacation rental neighborhood.
There is one large-ish lake near our house, which we always walk past hoping to see an alligator (we did once, a baby.) We have seen other wildlife like turtles, frogs, birds, and even fish jumping up to eat the bugs. Also, there used to be a snake bird who would sit on that grey drainage box regularly and overlook the lake. We called him King Of The Lake. But we haven't seen him in a long time.
And I saw many anole lizards, but when the sun is setting they are hurrying to hide from predators so I couldn't get any good pictures.
I felt kind of melancholy on this walk. Perhaps being so health-anxious lately, or recounting my parents' untimely deaths during therapy, or the plain fact that fall was my mother's favorite time of year and both my parents died within the same week of October and all of that is coming around again...maybe it's all of that. And thinking about how old I feel already at 39, because through my parents--and through hearing hundreds of heartbreaking and despairing and pain-filled calls at CapTel during the pandemic--and through this nursing home job where I take down, essentially, peoples' last words to their family and final thoughts on their lives--I can see the human timeline. Doors closing never to open again; health fading, and things diminishing, and time rolling over each of us like a glacier, inevitable and relentless, crushing us all in the end. I see the desperate effort that people have to pour into finding some positivity, anything to look forward to...some small hope or tiny moment of joy to grasp, so that they can cope with the daily pain of their bodies, or the loneliness of being abandoned because they are older. I see how hard many people have to work, emotionally, to live out their sunset days with some semblance of peace and enjoyment instead of abject terror, constant pain, or the crushing weight and bitterness of looking back and seeing far more behind than ahead.
Woof, I didn't mean to be dark. It is just reality, though. I heard it for 40 hours a week, for years.
The clock never stops ticking. The figurative glacier of time looms. So I take walks, even though it's hot and uncomfortable.
Because I can do that, now. And at some point, later, I won't be able to.
----------------------------------------------------------
For once I had met my 30 hour minimum on Thursday, so I didn't have to work on Friday!
But I did get up at 7:30 still, and ate breakfast, and enjoyed some "me time" before driving the hour-and-fifteen to Warburton again.
I brought the peanut butter bread and it was much appreciated.
The receptionist and some of the craftsmen from the back came out to eat some, toasted and with salted butter.
We ate and sipped coffee while they re-laquered my trombone mouthpiece. It was a good visit :)
From there I drove to The Loop which is a shopping plaza partway back.
There's a Fresh Market in there. I treated myself to their grocery store sushi and checked to see if they had gummy candy corn (they didn't but it's early), then went to the Yankee Candle in the same area because I had a buy 1/get 1 coupon and Jameson mentioned wanting a vanilla candle. After lots of sniffing, settled on a smoked vanilla (which I suspect I will like more than him) and vanilla creme brulee (which I suspect he will like more than me). Then a stop at Publix for groceries for the week.
Back home Jameson was in some mood because he had to buy a tux for Candlelight.
The hope was that they'd provide outfits...you KNOW Disney has a whole warehouse somewhere dedicated to employee uniform tuxes. But no, so his choices were to rent a tux for three separate performances (at $200 per rental) or buy one ($600) so he bought one. It's probably good to have a tux in your closet anyway, but when you've made it past the age of 40 without having to buy one I guess it's hard. I'd be mad too. That takes a huge chunk of the money he'd be making on these gigs...in fact, more than half of his pay will probably go toward the outfit for the event.
So I had him smell the vanilla candles (my predictions were correct about what he'd like) and then made the peanut butter bread again which made the house smell delicious and put him back in an "ok" mood. Poor guy.
I have to admit that I cheated on this loaf; I did two things to make it rise higher.
Thing 1: used a smaller pan!
Thing 2: added an egg!
This quick-bread recipe is from the Depression era, when some ingredients (EGGS and BUTTER) were scarce. And so innovative housewives looked in their pantries and found substitutes; in this case peanut butter, because it has both protein and fat that can take the place of eggs and butter. But peanut butter doesn't have nearly the protein content of an egg.
And this ain't the Depression. I got eggs.
We enjoyed still-warm slices with an Italian dark chocolate peach spread that I got last week using a gift card.
It was incredibly good.
In the evening we watched two episodes of Only Murders In The Building, then Jameson went to a game night with his friends and I stayed home to vacuum and practice trombone and relax (I mean, TRY to relax.)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
I woke up an absolute mess on Saturday, heart racing and very anxious.
No idea why, perhaps there was an intense stress dream?
But it took all morning to even calm partway down. Not fun.
But I felt better when Kim, the Warburton receptionist, sent these adorable pictures of Moe the squirrel enjoying a small piece of my peanut butter bread! A squirrel likes something that I made...I am proud :D
Then breakfast, then outside to finally separate out a new banana pup that's grown big enough to stand on its own.
For the first time, I had to kill the other pups. There are too many of them now, and I don't need any more banana trees especially if they're all pouring energy into making clones instead of fruit. I feel bad but that's gardening for ya.
As I was cutting off dead banana leaves, I discovered a surprise!
These are two-striped walkingstick bugs.
The female is 2.5 inches long; I was startled to suddenly be facing such a large insect.
The male is much smaller and rides on her back (which is why these are often called "devilriders".)
They are very slow-moving and do not bite, but they can squirt a stinky chemical in self-defense that can irritate your eyes.
So I was very gentle and kept my distance. It was cool to find something new! Always bring your phone when gardening :)
Back inside I goofed off and ate lunch and practiced trombone.
I get tired more quickly on the larger trombone, but hopefully that will not be an issue soon.
Jameson and I went for a dip in the pool in the afternoon, which was nice as it's still very hot here.
He went to a show with friends (over an hour away and it's a show I'm not interested in so I declined) so I watched anime and worked on Foodie Finds and drank the last of my sake.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Sunday I got up early to work.
It went fine, I think.
Trombone practice in the afternoon, now I'm really buckling down on muscle memory so I can be ultra-comfortable with the part by the time the tour starts. And then of course they'll make changes and cuts and I'll have to learn all over again :p
It was a very slow day as Sundays often are, Jameson watched the Cubs game and I got very sleepy around 3:30 and had to struggle for my last hour of work. We ordered pizza and after dinner I tried to go for a walk, but it started raining in the first five minutes so I came back. It's also getting darker significantly earlier.
I guess Tropical Storm Idalia may nip us this week?
It will be nice to get some rain.