Adventures in the Pointless Forest

Some things I learned

1. Regarding the caramels: (a) my pan is in fact 3.5 quarts in size (if you filled it to the brim) and I don't think you'd like to make this quantity of caramel in any smaller pan; when it boils up as you add the warm cream mixture it goes quite QUITE high up. Pour gently. (b) my pan, which is perhaps my very favorite saucepan, and especially for candy making, has been discontinued apparently! Shocking and sad. So I suppose I won't be recommending it to all of you, after all.

2. On other sweet-related topics: (a) whether the problem is the pectin I bought or me, or something else altogether, there will not be any fruit jellies going out this year. I tried, believe me I tried, but... no. (b) when things go excitingly wrong in a time-sensitive way with hot fruit puree, it seems that I respond by remarking "balls shit balls shit balls shit balls."

3. Whoops, we had succeeded in not going to the mall at all for YEARS and then we did it two weeks before Christmas, that was exciting. It was because I had, for some odd reason, when Jane said no, she really did not want snow pants this year, responded by not buying any. This was extremely stupid, obviously. Then it snowed, and it transpired that oh, in fact, she did want some and indeed would not even be allowed to play on the unpaved bits of the playground during recess until she got some so in fact it was actually rather pressing, you see, that she acquire some without delay.

So off we went and wandered stupidly from shop to shop on the tide of crowds, and then Steve discovered he had lost his credit card earlier in the day, and Jane discovered that there is ASTONISHING HIDEOUS BEAUTIFUL TAT for sale at the mall, and I discovered that I wished to depart my body. So we all learned a lot, really.

In the end we did find some snow pants for Jane and this made her quite blissfully happy, and when we got home she played outside for a long time and that was very nice. It all makes her very happy, as you can clearly see:

 

Oh, hello.

...I didn't see you there. Oh, that's right, it's because I've been looking the other way for the past oh dear God two and a half years. That might explain it. You may have noticed that in the interim, everything in the world at large became extremely horrible. I'm not saying it's my fault, exactly; I'm just saying it's not 100% obviously not my fault. Mistakes were made.

Anyway, in the spirit of fiddling while Rome burns, here are some of the things I have been up to in this darkest timeline:

1. Growing sunflower shoots in our spare room, because I feel the need to be more in touch with my inner hippie and also because as unappetizingly, macrame-ish-ly wholesome as they may sound, they are actually delicious. Also because if you want to waste many hours on the internet without fear of wandering accidentally into the abyss, you could do a lot worse than opting for the cozy rabbit hole of the exceedingly detailed, beautifully photo-illustrated, compendious material available at sproutpeople.org. And then you might find yourself placing an order for some sprout supplies yourself. Or not, because you're not me. Who can say!

2. Drawing pictures of our new cat, whose name is Sardine, and who is quite insane, as kittens tend to be, in varyingly plausible situations. Like this.

The pictures go in Jane's lunchbox. 

The old cat, Nemo, died a while ago. Sorry I didn't tell you. Even though his most notable habit at that point was pissing on things, we were still sad, so it took some time before we were quite ready to begin again. But time did pass and now here we are with a lovely, deranged, floofy-tailed cat beast. 

3. Grading. So much grading.

4. Waiting for various academic publishers to contemplate whether or not they want to publish the book (!) I went and wrote. No, no, sit back down, it is not the exciting sort of book that features spies or romance or offworld exploration or dragons or dystopian teenagers or cats. It is the boring sort of book that features things like "referring expressions" and "presupposition."

5. Making caramels. Again! I may have failed to keep up with blog writing, but I remain faithful in my caramel making. Would you like to hear more about my caramel making? Well, whether you would or not, now you will! Anyway, the lovely Annette wrote and asked me about them. Perhaps I will tell you more about what I learned this time around after I've done it. But in the meantime, here is what I intend to do, based on prior experience:

Get out my 3-quart (actually a 3-liter! it's English) heavy saucepan, and another saucepan to heat the cream in. Prepare an 8" square cake pan by lining it with nonstick (important! though parchment would also do) aluminum foil. Then take:

• 360g cream
• 135g butter (salted)
• 270g sugar
• 35g corn syrup or glucose syrup
• scant 1/4 t. baking soda
• scant 1/2 t. salt

...and get it all lined up and ready to go. Heat the cream, butter and salt together in the lesser pan to melt the butter, then take that pan off the heat.

In the larger pan with plenty of headspace (everything will bubble up quite a lot, later), dry caramelize the sugar and corn syrup together, but not too dark, just a light clear butterscotch color.

Now add the cream, and the baking soda. OH LOOK THAT'S VERY HOT AND BUBBLY.

Cook to 248-250 degrees F (what is this nonsense, grams and Fahrenheit in a single recipe? yes, sue me.) If it doesn't get this hot it will have COLD FLOW, which is to say that it will abandon its shape at room temperature. Too much hotter and it will be too firm. Pour it into your prepared pan, set the pan on a cooling rack, and let cool COMPLETELY, i.e. overnight. Which for me means putting it in the attic so the cat doesn't destroy it, yes. Consider fridging it up a bit the next day before cutting; I won't need to because the attic is already fucking freezing.

And that's what I'm doing tonight, I guess! Twice, probably. How about you?

A short list of Jane's favorite expostulations

"Oh my GOD and HEAVEN."

"Ye cats!"

"Egad!"

"Heavens to Betsy!"

"Yessirree Bob!"

"Let's pretend that didn't happen."

Candygram

Today Jane asked, as we walked toward the park to meet up with her friend from school, "When will all the people go?"

"What, our friends who are coming for dinner later?"

"No! ALL the people."

"All what people?"

"ALL the people!! When will they GO?"

"Go?"

"Yes, like before there were any people at all. When will they go?"

Oh. You mean the extermination of the human race. Of course. How silly of me.

"Well, no one knows, but probably not for a long time."

"Why not?"

"Well, there are a lot of people."

"They could get eaten by sharks."

True, true

The other day I was on the bus and found myself in conversation with two little girls, aged about 4 and 9. After a couple of minutes of chat, the littler one held out her finger and said "YOLO."

I touched her finger with my finger. This seemed to be the correct countermove, but incomplete. So I looked at them without taking my finger away, and waited.

Older one: Now you have to say "true, true."

Me: OK! True, true.

Littler one, satisfied, withdrew her finger.

Older one: You know what YOLO means?

Me: You only live once?

Older one: Yes!

Littler one: It says it on a belt.

Now we know.

Jane sang a song today about her toy fox, Foxy, prompted by an earlier discussion regarding the difference between a cow and a bull:

I am a girl with a penis
Girl with a penis
E I E I O
Also a butt.

And how are you?

Hoonga

Jane turned three! How can that be?

It happens even to the best of us, I'm told. Does it always come with these bouts of KEENING SOUNDS and shoe throwing? I hope that is supposed to be usual, because it certainly is at our house. But aside from these small lapses, we are all pretty pleased with life overall, I would say.

Just now Jane informed me that she was going to read Goodnight Moon to me. It went like this:

I read it to you. Yes. Yes.
Hmmmm... and, and...
A whole lot of things happen.
Hinga hinga hinga hoonga
Hinga hoonga hinga hinga
Five kittens and, um, mittens.
Hinga...
Hoonga.
Hinga hinga hinga mouse
Hinga hinga hoonga
Goodnight.

PS. Also indicative of the current state of Jane's discourse, from today: (a) "I see the shadow of a creature," and (b) "It goed very well."

It's a lady carrot.

The most depressing day of the year! Allegedly. 

It was not too bad, here, though we've all had better ones. We slept extremely poorly last night. Poor Jane spend most of the night wailing and sobbing in our bed, and could not explain why. I kept asking her if something hurt, but she just seemed confused and inconsolable. Then whenever she would drop off for a moment, Steve would have a coughing fit. It was quite something.

In the morning, she was tired and feeble (as were we) and generally a little inclined to dissolve into tears (we managed to refrain), but otherwise okay. Since Steve and I both had the day off, we wanted to do something a little interesting, but in the face of the cold weather and the no sleep, not too interesting. So we went to "Asiatown," as Cleveland's not-really-a-chinatown calls itself, and did a little grocery shopping and let Jane gape at the tanks of live tilapia. One thing we bought was a bulbous carrot. 

"Why that carrot have a nose?" Jane inquired. "Let's give it eyes. And feet." So we did.

You will be glad to know that Jane was pleased by the results. "I like this carrot," she said. "It's a lady carrot. I like him."

Winter, a cavalcade of delights.

Me: Those little bowls are for condiments.

Jane: Of the house?

Quite.

Christmas was pleasant, as it canonically is supposed to be. I was I think only once compelled to refer to it as "Fuckwad" (merry fuckwad). Sweets were made, presents were exchanged, carols and murder ballads were sung, friends and family joined in pleasing harmony, et cetera. 

Now the semester is about to begin, the really-truly winter has arrived and with it its associated Stockholm Syndrome reactions (today it is THIRTY-SEVEN DEGREES FARENHEIT, break out the sundresses), and I have a nice lingering racking cough to go with it. Jane thinks it is all pretty swell

at least by day. The cold dark of early nightfall she still considers pretty objectionable, and really who can blame her? Certainly not I.

Lord, what little I have to say and how mundanely I manage to say it! I will try to scrounge up something more entertaining soon if only to stop boring myself, though it will have to be about something pretty dull at its core because that's all I've got going. Options that leap not-so-enticingly to mind include: drips, itchy hands, poorly-bound books, instant soup, piles of objects, dust in the corners, expensive face cream, inadequate baby lotion, jersey shirts (the dowdiness/disintigrating nature of), hair static, antihistamines, reading the same books over and over because they are the ones already in the bedroom, feeling like a jerk, how annoying the disappearing scroll bar is in OS 10.7, and sweet potatoes. Don't you want me to get started right away?

PS. Do not break out the sundresses.

How I always imagined parenting would be

STEVE and I are chatting away about something in the front seats of the car. In the back seat, JANE is looking out the window or something, keeping her own counsel. ABRUPTLY:

JANE: eysbrn

ME: What?

JANE: EYSBRN

ME: What?

JANE: Ice. Burn.

ME: Ohhh, ice burn.*

STEVE: "Ice burn!" is what you say when someone says something mean but funny about you.

ME: Mean and funny and true!

JANE: Yes. Ice burn. When you have ice sometimes they burn. 

US: Uh huhhh?

JANE: And then you can't see. Ice burn!

STEVE (light dawns): Oh! Like when you cut up onions? Because you're crying?

JANE (contentedly): Ice burn.

*This is, in fact, something we say around the house.