Average Jane’s Weekend in Progress

Saturday was a pretty great day. I woke to the sound of heavy thunderstorms – in fact, the thunder and lightning woke me during the night, but I managed to fall back asleep. When it was time to really get up, I dressed in my finest yoga attire (yes, that’s sarcasm) and met my friend A. at my usual yoga studio. She hadn’t been to a yoga class in quite a while, but she liked the teacher as much as I do.

When I got home, I started the meat and beans for minestrone on the stove and mixed up the dough to make some Italian bread. Weird baking aside: I loathe the last batch of flour I bought. I always buy unbleached all-purpose flour, but this time I got a new brand that was on sale and sounded all extra organic n’ shit. It is horrible. The color is yellowish and it’s so heavy that everything I make comes out kind of tough. I don’t remember what brand it was, but I’ll know it when I see it and I’m going to stick with brands I recognize from now on. Now I just need to think of recipes I can make to use it up that won’t be ruined. Maybe cookies. But anyway…

Around the time I shaped the bread into loaves and readied it for its second rising period, my husband woke up. I decided to make a skillet of potato cubes, ham, green pepper, onion, eggs and cheese. It turned out to be a delicious breakfast, particularly with a little ketchup.

Earlier that morning, my dad had called to ask if I’d come by his office and do some work. I’d mentioned to him last week how broke I was, and I think he wanted an excuse to give me money. After I took the bread out of the oven, I went over and worked for about two-and-a-half hours and he paid me $100. Woohoo!

When I got home, I finished making the minestrone and ate two large bowls of it and countless slices of bread. (Hey, fresh bread is fresh bread, even if it is made from weird, icky flour.)

That evening, I went to a friend’s house for an informal game night. I brought a 6-pack of HardCore Cider because it seemed like a good autumn drink choice. It went well with the chocolate rice crispy treats he’d made with Cocoa Krispies and chocolate marshmallows. I ate way too many of them.

When I first arrived, I was looking around at all of the Halloween decorations and I kept hearing something that I took to be a motion-triggered evil laugh, "Mwahahahahaha." It had a gutteral tone, but at the same time was rather thin and not very loud. It turned out to be the sound that his beagle makes when she’s sniffing around for crumbs. My friends had heard it so many times that they didn’t even notice, but once I said what I’d thought it was, they found it hilarious.

We played Apples to Apples and Scene-It TV Edition until about midnight. I won one round of Scene-It and answered a lot of incredibly obscure TV questions, some from eras before I was born. It’s a wonder I can even function with all the brain space I have given over to useless trivia.

I got a good night’s sleep and I’m almost over the headache that’s plagued me all week. Today I’m making ham and onion omelets for breakfast with toasted Italian bread, and then a cheese ball to take with me to a book club meeting. It looks like it’s going to be another fun day.