Kitchen Fever

I had visions of getting up Easter morning, making coffee, frying the bacon for the Hot Cross buns I made last night. Having breakfast in bed with the dogs lazying around us and the sun streaming through our windows. Put a bubble around that and prick it with a pin. I won't get into the gory details but its sufficient to say that the above fuzzy warm vision from my mind did not happen.

Instead it has been a battle of wills with the canine creatures of this household. I have made a discovery this morning that Beagles are the equivalent of a Canine Donkey. They both bray, both are stubborn and both can be led by a carrot.

Mind you I will say one thing about the Beagle, at least he avoids the muck and mire in the backyard. He hates getting his paws muddy. The Airedale and the CorgieX on the other hand I swear seek them out then run through the mud at least five times ensuring the muck will be tracked in. I could grow a garden with what gets tracked in. Have you met Bleach? Its my new best friend. My mop is threatening to go on strike with the overtime its been putting in. I don't dare put the laundry out until things have dried up. I envision my greyish white sheets with mud splatters from the dogs galloping by.

I was looking around my kitchen as I was kneading the dough last night and a memory came from a deep recess of my mind. I had to have been very little because my Grandmother who was a very tiny woman, (she weight 98lbs when she married my grandfather and was four feet eleven inches in height) seemed so big to me. She was baking something and pulled up a chair for me to help her. She opened a drawer and there was a rolling pin just my size. The kitchen was long and narrow with huge cupboards. Sometimes when I'm baking bread (its always bread for some reason) I can sense her. I realised last night that everything I want to do to the kitchen if very reminiscent of that kitchen from her house.

In the middle of the summers here I love to walk into my mother's kitchen early in the morning. It smells like my Nona's kitchen and there was always aromatic smells wafting from the windows. But its a certain combination of the scent of coffee, the promise of the heat in the cool of the morning and a linger of something baked. It was a homey smell. I think because we moved so much, my Nona's house was a rock. She was always there. At Easter time she would send up Scallili, (Sp?) a deep fried Italian cookie dripping in Honey. I used to look so forward to it. In someways it was so much more anticipated than the chocolate.

No wonder my kitchen is so important to me. Its like my zen room. I can pound out frustrations on the bread, contemplate the meaning of life as I'm washing dishes or reminisce as I'm stirring a sauce. With everything Hubby is planning, I'm now nagging that we arrange the room so it will be a practical room. Right now, everything is haphazard as it was all just a temporary solution. The purple cupboard is getting to me now along with the too high green counter with no space, and the one that isn't anchored down cause it was supposed to be makeshift. I'm really sick of makeshift after 10 years.

Its just cabin fever ranting combined with an itch to clean out everything but can't until the ground has dried out. Or it could be that Hubby never seems to work anymore. This week alone he has had four days off. I finally asked him if he still had a job or was this the company's polite way of letting him go. He says he still has a job.

Well the coffee cup is empty and that cannot happen in this house. A full cup of coffee is necessary for the creative energies to flow...Why do I hear Artist laughing at me inside my head...Okay... how about I'm a caffeine addict that can't be more than four feet away from the coffee pot or things get really ugly around here? Yup, that got rid of the voice from down the street cackling at me. My daughter informed me that Artist and I cackle. I told her to remember who cackles and not to mess with us lest I pull out my wand.

Remember, girls giggle, women can't be bothered, we outright laugh.

Happy Easter Everyone.