The boys and I were sitting watching TV this evening. I was in the recliner and John was laying on the floor below me. I told him to stop kicking my chair, and he giggled, but then I looked up and the light-pulls on the ceiling fans were moving too. We could still feel it, a little, before we got up. Seamus said he felt it on the couch. Things in the other rooms were rolling a little too.

I was second-guessing myself, since a train went by right after we felt it, and sometimes we feel those too. We went to the USGS web site, and nothing was up yet, so back to TV-watching we went.

After the show was over, I refreshed that site, and there it was, a 5.6 in San Jose, just over the hill from us.

It was very mild here. I’ve only felt two since I’ve lived in the valley, but I grew up in the Bay Area, and have been through a couple of that size. I bet things are knocked off walls, but I hope it wasn’t big enough to bring down any freeways or buildings. I don’t even have the jump-into-doorways reflex any more; we all jumped up, sure, but to go see what was swinging.

I hope my San Jose friends are all safe. I see that CNN says there were no injuries, and that it was a deep one, which explains the gently rolling effect.

Whee!

Pie is going to be my next nemesis, I believe. Well, pie crust, that is; I think I can grasp the fillings pretty well, as that’s just cooking.

I’ve never been much of a baker, with its precise measurements and sciences of leavening and all that. I’ve been starting small, with pizza crust (very forgiving) and tortillas and maybe a little bread here and there. But what I really like to eat is pie: pie with a light and flaky, melt-in-your-mouth crust. We have an amazing bakery in this town that’s given me a goal. I want to make pie crust like they do.

Last time I tried, it was a fiasco. This time, I thought I’d try some different techniques. Someone gave me a scrap of marble countertop to roll pastry on. I have a neat cast iron pie plate. A girl in the office brought in apples from her tree.

Not being able to find my shortening was a bad sign. I should have stopped right there, but the apples were all cut up and I didn’t want them to go all brown on me. I had bought some lard for the next phase of the experiment, so I substituted that. It was delightful to mix, and my hands are all smooth and soft now, but I think it should have been a little colder. It rolled out as thin and pretty as you please, but refused to budge from the board.

Five times, I tried, each time getting more frustrated and mixing it back together each time. I put it in the fridge to set up a little. That just gave me big cracks. I put more flour on the board; no go. Finally, I rolled it onto a tea towel and flipped it into the pan that way, but by then, it wasn’t any sort of pleasing circular shape.

OK, whatever. I did up the filling, dumped that in, and realized that I wasn’t going to be able to flip the container upside down for the top crust. Whee. I ended up doing that one on the towel too, and kind of rolling it out onto the filling.

What I have in the oven at the moment is the world’s ugliest pie. I was so frustrated with it that I didn’t even stop to take pictures, but if it’s really horrifying when it comes out, I promise that I’ll add one.

There, see:

I’ve made such odd choices in men lately (what choices I’ve made–there haven’t been a lot) that I metaphorically threw up my hands a few weeks ago and decided to just let bear camp pick my next one. Of course, I didn’t tell them that, so it’s been a remarkably stress-free few weeks.

They could hardly choose worse than I’ve been doing, and their population is more aligned with my tastes than say, the general internet. They’re a good bunch of people who like me and like doing what I do, and scoping out their single friends isn’t really a bad idea. I might even mention it to them one day.

I value competence above about all else, and I hate to be the dominant or more competent one in a relationship. It doesn’t really matter what he’s good at; I like a man who’s better than I am at things that I like to do. As I get better and better at these things, that narrows my potential dating pool even smaller; we have to take out the big majority that are married, and there’s a not-insignificant minority of the single ones who like their women to be much more feminine than I am, and then we start narrowing it down to the usual characteristics. Is he the right age? Am I? Is he not creepy? Decent looking? Fun to be around? All of those things select me right out of the dating pool.

There’s been a cute and obviously single guy rolling with us for the last month or so, from another camp that we run with. He’s nice, and he can definitely out-man me, which is a very important trait to me. He’s a good hunter, and his family is nice too. Thing is, I think he’s significantly younger than I am, and that usually doesn’t float my boat. So I’m trying to squash that crush, as it’s really sort of undignified to be chasing after a younger man, especially if it turns out not to be reciprocated. He’s good to be around though, so it’s only a mental squashing on my part. And I’m failing at the squashing part anyway.

(Photo deleted for his [and my] privacy)

His camp left this weekend (they stay up there for the whole of deer season) and brought down their firewood to our camp, which was nice. Having people come visiting reminds me of camping as a child, with that whole camaraderie thing going that really makes hunting the fun social sport that it is. He showed me some pictures of his previous deer, no major flirting that I could see. But as soon as they got back in their truck, no less than three of my boys pounced on me at once. 

“You know he’s single, don’t you?”

“He’s nice, what about him?”

That sort of thing. Coming from people who don’t know that they’re supposed to be match-making for me and aren’t really the type to set people up anyway. That’s more of a woman’s hobby than a man’s. Sort of makes me wish I’d been a fly on the wall in the truck he’d been hunting in that day.

Dennis backed me up, as I’d mentioned the guy to him before I narrowed down the age. Dennis knows that I’m aware, and I was a little embarrassed to be ambushed while he was still in camp, with his truck window down. I just pointed out that he was a little young for me and besides, he already had my phone number. I’m not stupid, after all! I gave it to him earlier in the season because he was going to talk to a taxidermist friend of his, but I had made sure that he still had it. His father tried to find one of his cards to give to me too–this might be a two-pronged attack.

I missed a golden opportunity to actually point out to the guys that yes, I would like to be set up, if not with him, then with other men of their choosing. It didn’t seem like something I could bring up out of thin air later. But right in front of him? C’mon guys. Ease up a little!

So the ball’s in his court, although I’m not sure that he knows it. It’s easier for me to be bold with a man that’s older than me. I don’t want to have that whole cougar vibe going; I’m not pretty enough for that role anyway, and it strikes me as a little pathetic. I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that he’s a little older than I think. And no, I’m not going to point out which one he is in that photo up there, but he’s one of them. And it’s not going to stay up very long.

Trite, I know, but it’s a cliche for a reason.

On Friday, we had a girls’ night out that started in my hometown. I left there twenty years ago, and since my folks moved a year later, I’ve hardly been back to see the changes.

Driving in to town was a little startling, but since that’s the part you can see from the freeway, I’ve spotted that before. That wasn’t the side of town that I grew up on anyway, so it was a lot like some other town.

I cooled my heels at my best friend’s folks’ house for a little while, as I didn’t have time to go check in to the hotel and get back before our dinner reservations. They’re not any different at all, still with the friendly bickering and the house looks about as it did. I bet they weren’t expecting me to still crash in on them in my forties though! (Which I’m not quite, but I don’t guarantee that I won’t do it again in two years.)

Then the girls were stuck in traffic, so I went downtown to find the place and secure our reservation. My head started swivelling like a tourist’s. The whole main street seems to have been remodelled in modern yuppie, except for some holdouts like the 50s-styled donut shop and the western store. Fancy restaurants and clubs everywhere, and people all over the place. I live in a town now where people really only walk because they’re poor, but these seemed to be cruising the downtown on foot. Back in my day, we used to cruise it in our cars, until they banned that. Back in my father’s day too.

I sat at the bar of the fondue place and people-watched. Besides that I don’t really like cities, and I’m sure it’s quite nice as cities go, I don’t believe you would catch me living there again, ever. I’m just not the yuppie type, and you clearly had to be to live there.

Fondue was fun and interesting, and surprisingly filling, and then we went back to the hotel. We ended up flaking on the rest of our plans, but that’s OK. We were out of the house. I’d planned to get up early so I could still get to the mountains, and not drinking helped with that goal a lot. I woke up at 5:30, laid there waiting for anyone else to get up and join me for breakfast for an hour, and then got up and got ready when it became clear that they weren’t going to.

On the way home, I swung through my old neighborhood. We used to be on the edge of town, and just a couple block over, we could run loose in the creekbed and the sycamores and the abandoned vineyard nearby. But that’s all paved over with million-dollar houses now, and my old house is well back from the city limits.

Things have become smaller in that neighborhood. The long, long street that I remembered had shrunk, and the front yards that were so huge that we could roll down the lawns look like postage stamps. I’m sure they’re not, that I’ve grown, but I thought it was odd that my current front lawn is bigger than that one. That one had seemed to go on forever when I was five. I suspect the backyard has contracted too.

I had to look at house numbers to find mine. The landscaping that mom had planted when she ripped out the lawn when I was in high school is all mature, and obscures the face of the house. I would have liked to get a picture, but it was early in the morning, and I didn’t know if the residents would appreciate a papparazzi shot at that time of day. I ticked off the neighbor’s houses as I drove by, recognizing each one like an old friend. I drove on out of the subdivision, thought about swinging by the high school, and decided against it. Enough reminiscing; time to move on. I find that I don’t miss that town at all. I’m not a town person anymore; it’s grown to a city and I’ve grown the other direction, into a country girl.

I like it that way.

Seamus has been talking about making butter for a few weeks now. I’d seen a blog article about it too, so I wonder if one of his teachers didn’t also, and mention it to the class.

So when we were grocery shopping today and I happened to be picking up heavy cream for something else, he reminded me of it.

Sure, why not? So I threw another half-pint into the basket, and we came home to make butter in the mixer.

He did most of it too, although I’m a little possessive of my precious mixer.

I set it up and supervised while he poured the cream in and turned it on.

We both wondered how long it would take, and how we’d be able to tell when it was done. There was a lot of checking and tasting going on, and it turns out that over-whipped cream does taste quite a bit buttery.

But it seems that when it turns, it’s obvious. One minute, white foam and the next, presto! Real butter! We saved the buttermilk for some future project, popped the butter into a container, and Seamus is now anxiously awaiting dinner, where we’ll dine on pot roast with pomegranate and french bread with butter that he made himself.

I’m pleased that he’s interested in cooking; John came over and stuck his head in too, but it doesn’t fascinate him like it does Seamus. He’ll like it at dinner time though; it’s really good!

I’m no different from a lot of women. I’m not the only one who likes to shop. I’m just a little odd in where I like to shop, and with my concept of acceptable.

F’rinstance, I found it fairly acceptable to sit stranded in Stockton on Monday, an hour from home, on my only true day off (and not hunting) in a month. I was waiting for my beautiful new accessory to be installed, you see, and good things take time.

 

See, isn’t it pretty?

 

It’s a winch, a big one. I’m trying to spend some of my new-found income on things that I can use later if the contract goes away, and to keep my tax bill down in the process. I’m going to add a portable, truck-mounted crane to this setup so I can apply power in a vertical direction and lift those heavy concrete vault lids when I have to. And yeah, maybe the occasional deer or bear too. And if this tool can rescue me from hairy four-wheel-drive situations as well as move pipe around, well that’s good then, isn’t it?

I do love a well-made tool, and this one is a multitasker. It’s got an air compressor on board so I can reinflate tires if I have to drop the pressure for more traction off-road or if I want to get some air-powered tools. JJ suggested tweaking an air grinder motor into a blender bottom and mounting it right there on the brush guard, but I’m not a huge fan of the margarita. I’ll take the tequila straight please, and only the good stuff.

I’m not done with the project yet. They couldn’t put the front receiver on since I have a big aftermarket intercooler that gets in the way, and I’ll have to find a welder to make some drop brackets for that. And they didn’t get to fixing the gauges that someone else installed badly. And they just plain didn’t have my new tires in stock. But I walked away happy. Nothing that I’ve done to this truck is just for cosmetics; everything has a purpose. It’s an ongoing project, but this was a good step.

This is the year, I decided.

This is the year that I take the kids with me hunting. Seamus has wanted to go for a few years, but I was worried about hunting alone with him, and having to track something in deep, with a little kid in tow. John wasn’t much interested in going, but Seamus was.

Well, now he’s big enough, and I hunt a little differently these days. Bear hunting isn’t about silent stalks through the woods, and we’re not alone either. It’s a noisy, crowded, truck-racing sort of thing, surrounded by men and dogs. If a bear trees too far in, I don’t have to go. But if one trees relatively close to a road, I can bring my kid. There are lots of kids at our bear trees, some of whom have been coming since they were practically riding in backpacks to get there. I thought my boy would fit in just fine, and he did.

 

He’s been so excited about getting to hunt this year that he signed up for hunting, shooting, and wildlife in his 4-H classes. I’m excited about that too, and wonder if the leader maybe needs some help.

I considered bringing both boys for about a minute. It’s good for them each to get some one-on-one time with me though, and this way I don’t have to listen to the bickering. Seamus had major dibs on getting to go first, but his enthusiasm got John interested too, and the next full weekend I go, he’ll be the one with me.

He had a great time too. Jeff’s son Tyler was there too, although that brought back the whole bickering thing I was trying to avoid. The boys seemed to understand that a lot of bear hunting is driving around, but it wasn’t too boring for them. We did some serious four-wheeling, at one point getting all four wheels off the ground (oops) and Seamus was quite impressed with Mama’s driving. They didn’t really like the listening part, where they had to hold still so we could hear dogs in the distance, but there wasn’t too much of that this time. They did like the snow.

On Saturday night, another family rolled into camp, one with three boys all younger than Seamus. He gleefully walked away from Tyler, who was fully coming on the big brother, and got to be the big kid himself, with three little urchins all in a row very seriously listening to him holding court. I didn’t burst his bubble and tell him that those particular boys had been bear hunting a whole lot more often than he had, and they all hit it off well. There was a bear being skinned to inspect, sticks to poke in the fire, and a creek to go in when they’d been told not to, after all.