what’s this? three posts in two days? surely this means that that harpie of a book project i was working on is safely ensconced at the printers, being teased and bound into its silky-sheened covers… but, no.

after postponing the launch date for a fortnight to give us more time to work on it, it became clear that “us” meant “them”. “they” who, after i gave them a stack of PDFs for proofing a week and a bit ago, promised daily that the amendments would be sent back tomorrow, then tomorrow, then monday, then tomorrow, then tomorrow, then tomorrow, then this afternoon, no, tomorrow, no no, this afternoon. so finally on thursday it landed with a thud, as only an 11-page word doc can, detailing changes, additions, suggestions to move a single page to somewhere else in the book where there is already something else, and an even better suggestion that because they had to remove a pictorial page i could perhaps add some pages at the end where more pictures could go. hmf.

so i did the sensible thing of course: i ignored it. and gave myself the day off. this was possible because friday morning, a little before five, the boy took the kid — slumped still asleep on his shoulder — away for easter holidays, in the country, with his olds, for an unspecified period of time, but most probably at least until wednesday.

W H O O P.

so i blogged for some hours. and i went up the street in the drizzle for a paper and some magazines, and i sat on my balcony drinking hot chocolate and eating hot buttered cross loaf. then i blogged for some more hours. and watched four episodes of season two of “carnivale”, rented the day before for the bargain price of $3.50 for the entire six-disc set.

then i made wontons, which is something i’d wanted to do since i read of helen’s wonton frenzy. truly, it was as easy as she said, and why have i not done this sooner? the only hiccup came halfway through the wrapping: i had dealt with exactly half of my filling of organic pork mince, water chesnuts, straw mushrooms, garlic, soy sauce, white pepper and minced garlic… when my wrappers ran out! i guess helen’s packet of wrappers must have been twice the size of mine, and when i read the empty packaging again, there it was: 34 pieces. who the hell gets all geared up squishing minced pork through their bare fingers, and then makes only 34 wontons?? ridiculous.

i wasn’t up to re-refrigerating the bacteria-infested remainder until i got more skins, so i tossed it into my wok with a tub of leftover rice, and voila! instant pork fried rice dinner! which wasn’t very good friday of me i suppose. i made up for it by staying up much too late and watching that jesus movie on tv.

this morning, i found myself awake just after six, so i cleaned the house. i have a clean house. so maybe it’s not the same as if my mum had cleaned it, but spray and wipe was involved, and a vacuum cleaner, and several large garbage bags. by ten, i was freshly scrubbed, waiting for deborah to show up: we were going on a bagel hunt.

she’d mentioned these really good bagels that a colleague kept bringing her, and then there was a story in the paper, and a one-off easter weekend saturday opening, and it all came down to us on a train to bondi junction, finding the great bagel and coffee company right there in the pedestrian mall, and splitting an everything bagel with a generous spread of smoked salmon and dill cream cheese: cream cheese, into which had been blended smoked salmon and dill. we ate it, so happily, sitting just in from the rain, with paper cups of steaming english breakfast tea. then we went back in and between us bought 18 bagels to go.

except we didn’t. well, the bagels didn’t. the counterboys were kind enough to hold them for us, while we explored the westfield behemoth across the road. after a few hours of great consumer restraint, we went back to pick up our bagels, and pretended for a little while that it might maybe be a little bit too crazy if we sat down to bagel sandwiches for lunch. our restraint is no match for bagels though, so there we were:

“i think i’ll get the pastrami one.”
“mmm, yeah, i think i might too.”
beat.
“unless…”
“we order two different ones and split them?”
“yeah!”

it helps to talk things through sometimes. the pastrami one, for which we chose a rye bagel, comes with sliced pickle, tomato, lettuce and mustard. they put the pastrami on steaming, but if you sit outside on a rainy autumn day, and decide that you want to save the pastrami one for last, it will be stone cold. but tasty. so tasty. tastier, though not necessarily better, than the turkey one, on an onion bagel, with cranberry sauce, avocado, brie and sprouts.