Smokey the Magnificent

What I ended up doing was making this tomato sauce, which was vaguely exciting; inventing a recipe for coconut chocolate chip meringues, which was fun; cleaning the kitchen, which was neither; and eating a big ol’ bowl of pasta with the snortlepig while we watched The Princess and the Frog. Again.

So. If your firstborn child had to get twenty-to-life in the clink for something, would you rather it were insider trading or arson? Discuss.

It occurs to me that I tend to leave things hanging on this blog. So, to recap:

• I finished knitting the pig’s scarf. I have also knitted, but not yet sewn up, two wristlets and a headband. The latter I may end up ripping out (or “frogging”, as they call it in the biz - why, I do not know), because my sister sniggered at it and I have been plagued with doubts ever since. It was supposed to be English … something… stitch… lacy, innit, but it has Lumps in it. And I suspect if I end up putting it on the pig I will wince at the photos in coming years.
• Driving lessons seem to have kind of temporarily dried up. I’m not sure why, but it wasn’t due to anything exciting.
• I successfully filled the snortlepig up with the correct amounts of fish, liver etc last week, and have made a meal plan for this week as well. To make things even more exciting, Helpdesk Man’s lack of steady income has caused us to retrench, slimming the grocery store budget down to svelte and cheeseless proportions. I have rationed Helpdesk Man’s chocolate, and were it not for Easter he may have already gone on a rampage.

I think I peaked early. Two lessons on I seem to choke more often than glide, growl where I should purr and freeze up with terror at intersections. Oh well. My father-in-law told me at the first lesson that new drivers usually come to a point of getting worse before they get better, so perhaps I am just precocious. At any rate I have now successfully reversed twice and executed a couple of extremely cautious three-point turns.

In happier news, my knitting is coming along. The wristlets which I demoted to dishcloths I ended up ripping out several times, and am more or less committed now to making a wee scarflet for the snortlepig - the kind that fastens with a button. I decided to do the wholething in Continental knit stitch in order to master it - it is boring, but virtuous.

Right now, though, I’ve set it aside for more pressing projects. During the last few days summer has slunk away, and it turns out the snortlepig no longer fits into any of her nice warm clothes. So I am on a long sleeved top-making mish this week, using the fabrics I bought at Spotlight recently and some vintage-ish patterns from Mother. The first one will be a tasteful grey panelled number that I’m adapting from a dress pattern - which, being vintagey, is extremely brief to begin with, so shortening it is pretty easy. It does, however, require facing my two nemeses, sleeves and buttonholes. (Zippers are my third nemesis. Taxes are my fourth. I’m also not keen on right-hand turns. Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.)

80kmph, fifth gear, successfully avoided a pukeko, managed a couple of intersections and only changed into first gear in mistake for third twice. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself. Driving round curves, in particular, reminded me very much of sewing - in fact, at one point I had a strong impulse to get out of the car and clip the curve of the road for a neater edge. Fortunately, I did not mention this to my father-in-law.

First driving lesson tomorrow. I got my licence in the mail, resplendent with a photo that makes me look like a cynical old-maid librarian who swigs from bottles of embalming fluid behind the stacks. My father-in-law will be instructing me. He’s quite good, calm and factual, but with a tendency to start snapping “Brake. Brake! BRAKE!” at apparently random intervals. As I recall, during our abortive lessons in the Uni car park last year, I can get up to third gear and avoid lamp posts like nobody’s business, but I cannot reverse. Also I dislike indicating and checking the rearview mirrors, mostly because it didn’t seem strictly necessary in an empty car park and I was having too much lovely fun with the steering. Not terribly promising, is it?

Also, practically my only sister Betty Scandretti has become affianced. Three cheers for Betty. Top work. We knew you could do it with a little application and persistence. Let us all learn from the example of Betty.

I made pumpkin chocolate chip pecan cashew cookies today. Who knew such a thing existed? I was mooping around the blogosphere in that contrary mood where no recipe seems to fit - it has ingredients you do not possess, or has to sit overnight before cutting, or needs those little cookie cutters the snortlepig scattered around the floor and Helpdesk Man trod on so the heart, your favourite shape, will never be the same again. And then suddenly, pow. Or zap. Bakerella, whose website is causing you to sniff snobbishly because of her lavish use of Betty Crocker boxed mixes, comes out with a for-scratch recipe for pumpkin chocolate chip pecan cookies. And your wilting spirits perk up like the ears on a cartoon rabbit, and away you scurry. The cashews weren’t canon, I just ran out of pecans. And the biscuits were nommy, and it made enough to give to my father-in-law tomorrow to say thank you for the driving lesson, assuming he exits said lesson still able to eat; and for Bible study on Thursday. So ha.

Well, anyway. It is 11:30 in the blessed PM and I must go publish an article about the best times of year to go to Disneyland; a subject on which I am troublingly knowledgeable, considering I have never been.

I just learned that Einstein never learned to drive a car. To which I say: Is it.