Paksworld

So it’s been a busy week-and-a-day.  All did not go as planned, except the bluebonnets really did peak when HouseGuest was here from upstate New York and they smelled amazing and we got several walks out on them between showers.

HouseGuest, who like most people who come to Texas did not want to see–particularly did not want to see–what she saw on her last full day, when she ventured out to the north horse lot alone.  She had said she didn’t want to see one.  I hoped she wouldn’t see one.  We wandered here and there among the bluebonnets, with me being very careful, insisting that we move slowly and only when looking at the ground ahead…that no, we could not just walk through the flowers  without using our poles to move them and check for…etc.  And then…there it was in front of her.   Did she shriek and run back to the house?   No.   She took pictures of a nice (!) good-sized, not at all friendly rattlesnake, staying out of range of its strike and using the zoom.   Pictures on my LiveJournal: http://e-moon60.livejournal.com/  for those who want to see our most dangerous snake.

Aside from walking out to see bluebonnets and photographing natural beauty (and one natural not-so-beautiful), we did some knitting (she, like me, had been away from it for years, and–taught by her mother–had knit only flat things, as I had.)   Now, wanting more handknit socks than the pairs I’d made for her, she was faced with learning to knit them.  She’s quick.  She learned long-tail cast on and knitting in the round, and ribbing (all new)  and went home with the start of a shorty sock, yarn, needles, and needle-gauge, with more balls of yarn headed her way by FedEx.

Then there was cooking.   She has more techniques than I do, and led me from a white roux–which I knew how to make–to a cream gravy without lumps, which I didn’t, and her really clever way to do pie crust that turned out well even with my “non-pastry-competent” hands.  (I have “bread hands”–a tendency to work pastry-type doughs too roughly and develop gluten that’s not wanted.)   She also cooks fish better than I do, which I observed, and made garlic shrimp and a mac & cheese that even I liked.  (It’s not like the mac & cheese made by one of my mother’s friends which I remember with less than delight.  Hers–well, we’re finishing it tonight for supper, and it’s wonderful.)  I had made chili and a pot of beans for her (she’d never had what I call “real” chili or “real” beans)  which she liked (and went home with my recipe for both.)  The last of the chili will be part of supper tonight as well.

In among all this, we did  a lot of talking about books, including the new one.  She’s a very perceptive reader–familiar with all my books and a librarian besides– and asked very good questions, for most of which I had answers, but some…I hadn’t thought of, and they were important and useful and I will spend this evening and some time tomorrow making notes and infilling here and there.  I had a character who had remained quite a blank, without realizing it, and thus what I blithely said about what was going to happen…made not enough sense.

I was delighted to be enough better from the Good Friday *splat* onto the driveway that I could drive down to Austin to pick her up, and appear almost normal in terms of what I could do, though I still tired easily.  Stuff still hurts, though not nearly as badly, and there was no “collapse-iosis” (a technical term R- and I use for when you just can’t get the internal motor started.)  She left Friday afternoon.   I have managed to get all the yarn & knitting stuff out of the kitchen and most of it back where it came from (I had boxes of yarn out to show her),  laundry in (last load  not finished), the fridge rearranged so we can get at stuff a little easier.  Plus I got the first sock of the turquoise/teal/cream/sand shorty pair onto the toe decreases.   And mostly caught up with email, etc.

Tomorrow is singing again, which I should be able to manage now, and then…the rest of the paperwork/email/etc.  And the book.  Onward!

(Some of you, I’m sure remember TWTWTW or TW3, as we called it.  )