Better Bread

Last week I made a loaf of bread and it just came out awful. It didn't rise like this. There was no dome of wrap over it. It rose a bit and then it collapsed and never did rise after that. After the 18 hours of rising, it never recovered it's lightness. I thought if I baked it off, it might still rise up and be good. It certainly looked good when it came out of the oven. But D~ ended up coming to get it and told me that it was heavy, pasty and salty. Just bad. I have no idea what happened to it. All I know is, what you see here is fantastic dough. This is it after a two hour rise. It fills about half the bowl. Just what it should be doing. You can see the air pockets. The dome is high and tight. It is exciting just looking at it.



It is now over six hours into the rise, twelve more hours to go. The dough is now one inch from the top of the bowl. It probably won't get any higher. The dome is as high as it will get. See the air pockets? Perfect. Everything is perfect. I put the bowl on a towel to add to the warmth, better than on a cold counter. This will be good bread. D~ is coming this Sunday and I am sure she will have great bread.

Bread is very important to me. I used to bake bread several times a week. It is what I used to give to people as a comfort to those with hectic, turmoiled lives. Holding a loaf of homemade bread in your hands is a really healing thing. How often I used to get calls from my customers when they got home saying "You know, I couldn't resist. I started breaking off pieces as soon as I got into the car. Thank you so much!" No one ever said - that was awlful - the worst thing you could ever have given me! There is something about fresh bread, real bread, that wraps the soul in a comfort not even a blanket can achieve. I used to be a bread baker. Maybe I will become one again. After all, it is soothing to my very being as well, bringing the dough together, watching the rise, handling the dough, the smell as it cooks, and when it emerges from the bake, it speaks. It speaks for quite some time in crackles as it cools. I think more people should bake bread. The experience is wonderful

Look! New Hair!

In December, I posted a picture of the Self with my typical long hair worn pulled back for years. I have accumulated quite a collection of beautiful hair ties all made by the Self. Ribbon flowers, beautiful buttons on elastics, bejeweled barrettes, some covered with old kimono silk, wonderful ways of holding the hair. So, a month ago I began to think short. When I first came to Oregon, my hair was 1/4 inch long. Shaved. I was extremely depressed and it showed. I looked extreme. I don't think there was anything soft about me. But I have recovered and I have found comfortable stockings to wear and my compassionate heart once again sleeps on a silk pillow.

I actually wanted my hair to be a little longer than this but I had a difficult time explaining to Angela, the wonderful hair stylist, what it was that I wanted. But this is close. It will grow in a couple of months. Or less. My hair grows fast. I am hoping not to have to take a brush to this. Wash and scrunch. Let as little fall out as possible.

The past year I feel like I am going bald. Can I stop that? Am I being paranoid? I used to have a lot of hair. I know medication and anemia can cause hair loss. But I refuse to go bald. Can you imagine having to live in a wig? Oh my god! A Sofia Loren wig. There is a salon just down the road that advertises them and every time I go by there I just recoil. Or, remember that spray they came out with that you spray on your bald spot and it colors the hair you have left there and it makes it look fuller? I can just see myself getting up every day and spraying my hair before going to work and then layering my face with paste and my lips with gunk trying to look young, only ending up looking like Nellie Costello on a good day.

So, I took a chance and I love it. We should do this more often. Change is good. I am sitting here feeling rather smug. Content actually. The sun was out when I got up. I had about an hour to get ready to leave. Therapy first then off the the salon. I didn't bring an umbrella. While I was waiting for the bus, I was thinking I should have brought one. It felt like rain. The weatherman said it was going to be a dry day. But the air felt like rain. I took a chance and didn't bring one. The day was good and I din't need one. However, five minutes after returning home, the skies opened up and the rain descended. I have rather good weather controlling angels, eh!

My Parents

I always loved this picture of my parents. It is how I have always wanted to see them. For me, this is how life should have always been. Avery marriage, every pair of lovers, should have a photo like this. It is peaceful somehow.



My mother has always loved shoes and clothes. This skirt is a little short for the 40's, do you think? But, paired with those shoes, she can carry it off. Those shoes---- do they not look like they came right out of a 2010 fashion magazine!! It is always sad to me that she was always throwing out the old and getting the new. These shoes whould have worked today.


All of my life, I can't remember a time when I saw my mother in the water. She had been abused in the water by her teasing brothers and subsequently became filled with dread. So it was always understood that you might as well throw in live electricity the moment she steps into water, that is how much she always hated it. That is what it felt like to be in it. And now I see this picture and I don't see that fear and loathing on her face. So, now what am I supposed to believe?

If I am correct, I was once told that Mom's dress was made from parachute silk. Her mother was, at that time, working in the mill yard for a manufacturer making parachutes which were at the time constructed from a tightly woven silk similar to Habotai silk which is still used today in making kites. I wonder if Mom still has the dress in that mysterious cedar chest she has in her bedroom~~~


This is my mother's oldest brother, Arthur. Uncle Arthur was the one who was killed in the war. After his death, Pepe just shut down and never really recovered from the impact. He stopped playing his fiddle, stopped participating in life. If you remember, by the time we knew him, he pretty much just sat in his rocking chair and spit in in his spittoon.

Next to Uncle Arthur is Mon Oncle Treffle. Uncle Tom. The cab driver. Don't they look like gangsters!

Self Image

We are constantly bombarded with these commercials of women and losing weight. It makes me sick how they dress after they have lost 30, 40, 80 pounds. They look like sluts. You can't tell me that that is what women are looking for in their goals to lose weight!

In this picture, I have lost 180 pounds. I am the one standing next to my Dad. Do I look like a hooker? Should I be trying to look like one? Have I missed the boat? Is that the goal for all women? Are we supposed to strive to wear skin tight clothing, big hair, spiked heels, and huge red lips?

Because if it is, I'm going underground.

My sister and I

This is Christmas 1951 which means I am 2 and Denise is One year old. We have two older brothers, Phil who is 3 and Dicky who is 4. It looks like we are supposed to be enjoying a tea party. I don't think I am having a good time and Denise looks like a doll propped up on a chair with red cheeks and a red nose. It looks like I got a baby carriage for Christmas there, off to the right. Although I didn't have a lot of dolls, I loved playing with the dolls I had. What a simple tree we had back then. We were still living on the West Side of Manchester at this point, on Notre Dame Ave? Because we didn't move to Brown Ave till I was three. So this was an apartment. I still sit with my hands on my knees like this a lot.

What a day. I baked bread and began a batch for Denise. The one I baked today didn't have the 18 hour rise time. It only had 14 hours and I tested the baking time. I wanted to see if bread that didn't have the long rise time still tasted good. It does but I feel is lacking in the taste of age, that sour dough taste.

I also made four chicken pot pies that came out fantastic, if I say so myself. The first batch I made my sister, she said, were rather dry. So I altered the recipe and I do think this will be a big success. And I used puff pastry for the crust. Once they are cooled, I will freeze them individually so she can come get them when she wants. She lives on a boat and does not have the storage space in her freezer like I do. I will be anxious to hear what she thinks.

I also bundled up 2009 in bills and put together figures for taxes and organized all my files. More throwing out stuff that is totally space-hogging. Old catalogs from four years ago. Imagine.

I wrote to my doctor about the past year and my health and my recent B12 experience. Now she is going to want to see me, but she is in her office the same days I work and I hate to rearrange my schedule to see her only to have to insist that I will not add any more drugs to what I already take. You know how doctors are. Always wanting to have you take more pills. I hate that. I have spent the past year changing so much. Even the way I walk. I even smoke half the cigarettes I used to and I don't smoke much. I think that the cholesterol thing has to do with the anti-depressants I take. I have heard that. I have read that. I never had high cholesterol until now. But then, I never took this medication either.

So it is nearly one in the morning and now I will settle down and work on my embroidery. It is quite the project, and I will blog it when it is done. But for now, tiny stitches and patience. I have had to open the window in my livingroom. With all the cooking, it has gotten warm in here.

Dad and the beach

We didn't live far from Hampton Beach, the only coast of New Hampshire. The coast of NH is 17 miles long and unless my sisters correct me, I believe it consists of Hampton Beach and Rye Beach. I have been corrected. The coast consists of Seabrook, Hampton Falls, Hampton, North Hampton, Rye, New Castle and Portsmouth. It is the shortest ocean coastline of any US coastal state. I have to give it to my parents for getting us there so much when we were kids. How I loved the water. You just couldn't keep me out of the water. We spent a lot of our childhood around water. The beach. Massabesic Lake where Dad had his sail boat at the Massabesic Yacht Club. And then there was Pine Island Pond, right in our back yard, up the hill, and down the other side. Two minutes and we were there, swimming in the summer and skating in the winter. I still love the water, but it is very very rare that I get to indulge in its soothing robe. I haven't worn a bathing suit in 45 years? If I go in the water, it is with a swimming dress, and usually when I am alone. Or, when I am with people who don't mind that I am in a dress.

My sister Suzanne and her husband John had a beautiful home in Essex New York that had a beautiful little in-ground pool surrounded by a garden, an apple orchard to the left, and Lake Champlain off in the distance. Occasionally I would travel up to take care of their home and their peaceful creatures while they traveled. I spent a lot of time in their pool. I loved cleaning it. Their little dog, Louis, would just lay there and I would skim for bugs and leaves for what seemed like hours. A beautiful place. Wonderful memories. Then I'd jump in, splashing him. Bark bark bark bark bark....... Louis was always by my side. I would sit for hours and knit or do some handwork and he would sit on the back of the sofa right near my shoulder and sleep, every once in awhile sighing. Then I'd shout out "squirrel!!" and off he'd be, through his doggie door, looking for the damn thing, running around the front lawn, frustrated that he couldn't find it.

I always thought my father was the handsomest man I ever knew~~~~~

And to end, today, pictures are all about color setting, focus, pixels (whatever they are) everything being just so. But we grew up with black and white. And to me---they speak volumes.

B12

It is such a small vitamin, but it sure creates large problems. For a month and a half it has been reeking havoc on my body, my left leg. Only I thought it was just work, or the shoes I was wearing. It has been years since I have felt this kind of pain. It's not the bones. It's in the muscles. I haven't been able to stand, walk, sit, nor lay down. It has just been there. I get up in the morning and it is gone. Then within an half hour or so, it's back. God, it is annoying.

I should have analyzed this pain. I could have come to a solution sooner. But I just lived with it while it got worse and worse. Then before Christmas it dawned on me that maybe it had to do with this B12 deficiency that I have had for 25 years. So I did a push. For three weeks I took a shot each Sunday. I wore different shoes. I carried as little weight on my shoulders as possible. I have been totally pain free now for 5 days. Total freedom. I can walk like a normal person. I am back to working on my posture. I have run out of the stuff and I have no refills of course. So the pharmacy had to get ahold of my doctor to get more. Then the doctor's office had to call me to find out what I was taking, like they didn't know what B12 was. So rediculous. I have to send an email off to my doctor to let her know what has been happening. Maybe she can up my dosage. If my B12 level is low, then what I am taking is a waste because obviously it is not enough.

Doctors. But it really is my fault. I have to take the initiative to address this with her. She is not going to break down my door. I have to break down hers. So~~~~

Tomorrow, I will do this. Vitamins. Pain in the arse.