No News

Yes, we have no babies. The world, or at least my corner of it, waits with baited breath. How long must we endure before little Tyler graces us with his presence? How long?!? Of course, I feel the need to remind everyone that as of this moment, we’re still an hour and a half from being ‘late’, even. And first babies tend to be late. My money is on a few more days, but who knows? I am suspicious that baby Tyler recognizes that we are totally and completely ready for him at any moment, and so the most annoying thing, of course, would be to show up as late as possible. A tricky opponent, he is, but we will see who has the last laugh. (It will probably be him.)

I find myself fairy calm, even at this late hour. No doubt the adrenaline will start surging the moment the contractions start showing up, but I am not burdened with an extra 40 pounds of weight and a badly-functioning set of abdominal muscles, so the waiting, for me, isn’t particularly arduous. The man’s job is to be ready for stuff, and I’ve got the readiness, at least, as much as one can, pretty well down. I’ve been reading ‘ahead’ in my baby book, not because I think I’ll remember any of this stuff, but because I want to know what it is that I should be trying to remember later. I can always look it up when I need it, as long as I know it can be looked up. Years of taking open-book tests have taught me this, and having babies is the open-book-iest and test-iest of all tests.

Um...is there anything to write about other than babies? I guess. We got our new freezer in today, which is where we will be storing baby milk and frozen dinners to make while we are too busy with the baby...and big bulk items to eat when baby turns into a teenager. I guess it is all pretty baby-centric, I can understand why it is that parents seem to talk about nothing else. I’m playing video games...while waiting for the baby to show up. I’m going to work...until Jessie goes into labor. It’s babies all the way down.

So freezers, though, I’m trying to think of ways to keep the freezer in the house. There aren’t a whole lot of really convenient places to store the thing, really. We could fit it in the garage without too much trouble, but I worry about the freezer in the garage during the summer. There’s a lot of ambient heat for it to compete against out there. So I’d like to store it in the house, but we don’t have a lot of out of the way places to tuck it. So I have considered putting it in the office, but instead of just having it be a big, boring freezer, there, I want to decorate it so it looks like something cool. Maybe a crypt door, or a big, square R2D2, or a fake stereo, or any number of strange, art-deco contraptions. This is Austin, after all. The other thing to note, though, is that our big, fancy, stainless-steel fridge? It’s nice, but magnets don’t stick to stainless steel. A tragedy! With this freezer, we have plenty of ‘real estate’ with which to display macaroni turkeys and the like.

So in an attempt to make this blog not just about babies (I know it tended to drive me crazy when I was young and foolish) let’s talk about bread. I got myself a neat bread book that has really gotten me into trying some proper bread science. I’ve been making a similar, simple sandwich loaf to the one I have had before, but with a few refinements to my technique and, importantly, a notebook. As any PHD-bound sister of mine will tell you, it’s not science unless you are documenting your results. So far I only have a couple of attempts in there, but I’m documenting the temperature (which has clearly had a noticeable effect on rise times already) the different variety of ingredients, tasting notes, all sorts of things. It’s details like that that make you a really good baker, and that allow you, eventually, to start making stuff up. It’s quite gratifying, not the least of which because Jessie and Mom Swanson get super-appreciative when I make bread. Jess dislikes my new technique, though. I have to let the bread rest after getting out of the oven, which means a significant wait before we can chop into the fresh loaf, the house smelling of yeast and flour the entire time. Torturous.

-N