52

there are perfect days:  one on hydra in 2002 where i browned in the sun for hours, breaking only to jump off the cement slabs jutting out of the rocky beach into water so blue i couldn't believe it was real even as i was swimming in it;  late septembers, before harvest, with the sun setting as you drive upvalley; not guilty verdicts . . .

and there are incredibly lousy ones too, that i'm not even going to enumerate because can we say bummer?, but chances are they involve some combination of crying clients and awful phone conversations and just plain really bad news. 

oh man, yuck yuck yuck last paragraph.

but so there are these two poles, but lucky we don't live at the poles that often.  when you add eggs to a hot mixture, like boiling chocolate, you have to temper it in order to prevent the eggs from scrambling:  you have to add just a little of the hot liquid to warm the eggs enough.  and then you stir stir stir and slowly add a little more, and so on and so forth.  because if you dump them in together it's just too much of a shock. 

okay, there was a metaphor in here somewhere, but it got lost because now all i can do is think of baking.  of turning on the kitchenaid and throwing things together and putting them in a dark hot oven with a bit of mystery as to what will emerge 45 minutes later. 

but yeah, you need a little of both, slowly, so as not to shock the system.

today wasn't perfect.  there was an overslept alarm, clients who didn't get what they (and i) wanted, a weird smell in my car that i can't trace.  but there was a stretch this afternoon/evening where i couldn't think of anything else i'd want to be doing.  or not doing, since at first i lay on the couch in the dark with the air conditioner on full blast, reading while habie slept on my feet.  and then there was a little putzing around the plants (nasturtiums!  nasturtiums are sprouting!) and a little cooking in the kitchen, and it all sounds mundane now, trying to describe it.  but at the time, it was just lovely.  and the eggs didn't scramble, whatever that runaway metaphor means by now.

also, roasted chickpeas?  100% habie-approved