The first sign must have been when Larry came back from FedEx-ing Peter’s birthday present. “Didn’t get your book,” he told me.

“How come? Didn’t they have it?”

“No, when I left FedEx I noticed I was wearing my bedroom slippers. Not going to the book store in my bedroom slippers.” Of course I laughed. You know how fastidious Larry is. He would NEVER. “Don’t tell anyone,” he said.

But I’m not telling anyone. I’m just telling you. And I got what was coming to me. See, we were going to have a nice Sunday dinner, this rainy Wednesday, with roast chicken and et cetera at 1:00-ish. So I was mashing the potatoes and leaned the little hand mixer on the potato pot, reaching for more milk. The mixer leaped off the pot, struck the counter on its way to the floor, thereby turning itself on, and landed with the beaters happily flinging mashed potatoes across the floor, the cabinets, under the island.

Yeah, it was kind of funny, and I should have been more cafeful. But then juices of the nicely-done chicken quietly overflowed the cutting board and trailed onto the counter, onto the floor. Great. We could practically eat our dinner right off the floor, omit the middle man.

The gravy. The whole point. Okay, the roasting pan is stainless steel and therefore functional on our conduction stove-top. I added flour to the glorious brown fond and began to stir. But the stove wouldn’t stay “on.” Kept turning itself “off.” What the heck? Seems the pan is convex on the bottom, its surface thereby not even touching the burner. So we have to transfer the hot mess onto a skillet in order to proceed. No big deal, but still. Sigh.

The chicken was delicious, by the way. Brining. Magic.

Time to do the dishes? Okay, we knew the disposal was broken, plumber scheduled for tomorrow, but we didn’t know that the sink wouldn’t drain. Until we saw the sink swimming with yuck. Really? Is this a joke?

Nope. Have to do the dishes in the laundry room. Which is not so awful, right? And while Larry got to work, I got the bottle of Bono and the floor mop to attack the kitchen floor. I’m walking down the hall when the bottle breaks loose from the spray nozzle by which I’m holding it, crashes to the floor, spraying Bono product across the walls, the front door. By the time I set it upright and find a mop, the damage has been done.

I don’t know. It’s 2020. We should have known.

“So what do you do all day?” someone asked me. “I mean, what IS there to do down there by yourselves?”

Yeah. Good question. After some thought I realized that what I do all day happens mostly in the kitchen. For example, here’s one of last week’s chores:

Poblanos, from Larry’s garden. It is Larry’s garden, his domain, his man-cave. He plants, tends, harvests and then? Right. So I was about to roast these lovelies, then freeze them for future — well — whatever. They’re the last of the produce for the year, but from the garden and orchard this year, I’ve fermented sauerkraut, canned pears, made pickles, both dill and bread and butter (this with help from buddy Vik), made blackberry jelly, dried prunes, frozen tomato sauce, frozen apple slices and mock-mincemeat, pickled hot peppers. I thought to line up the jars for a photo shoot, but that was too much work.

When you add cooking the daily bread, it adds up to a lot of hours beside the kitchen sink. No — Larry bakes the bread chez Viehl, that comment was meant metaphorically.

But sometimes we do get away. We recently toured the Nature Conservancy preserve surrounding the confluence of the Middle and Coast forks of the Willamette. We’d been there 10 years ago when the property had been acquired, and it was pretty wonderful to see how the former gravel mining site has been transformed:

Sometimes the get-aways are not all that much fun:

The realization that IF we ever manage to sell or lease our condo, we have to remove all personal belongings has struck. Until now, as we use the condo for our Portland base, we have left supplies appropriate to that activity in place. Okay, let’s be honest. We bought new toothbrushes, etc. for farm use, but over the years, acres of stupid debris have accreted in the condo. Is that the correct word? Like shampoo samples from hotels around the world. Extra toothbrushes from dentist visits. Multiple bottles, bits and pieces — well, you know. I bet you do this, too.

Anyway, the photo above is from just one day’s hard work. This is the stuff we didn’t throw away, and about which hard calls will have to be made on its arrival in Corvallis. One of us is a pack rat, the other a practitioner of the Throw-it-away school. Maybe not obvious who’s who, but one of us wonders why a man needs 17 golf shirts. Yes, all of them in perfect condition. She has to bite her tongue.

While all around us the election vibrated, a moment of transcendence:

It’s here! Already the catalogs are arriving. Ah, winter.

Been below freezing, the chickens are molting and NOT laying eggs. Can I correctly say “not laying eggs?” As in perform a negative? Hmm. Their water freezes, so we stretch an electric cord across the driveway to heat their dispenser. Larry does not like this practice, but needs must.

And it’s time to bake the fruit cake. Back to the kitchen!