It’s suddenly so much colder. Everyone is walking around pretending it’s okay the temperatures dropped from +13 to -2 in two days when it’s not, it’s not okay. But I’m nothing if not a good sport, so I, too, say nothing.
Ah yes, well, it’s December, after all. People are getting snow out there, while my mind is stuck somewhere in August. These days, I feel beautiful again. It’s nice. I leave the house and think: “Good luck not falling in love with me today, people of the world!”
Nothing changed, I haven’t really lost weight or changed my style. Just out here, you know. Being. This feeling is temporary so I embrace the delusion wholeheartedly.
***
I woke up in a fighting mood today. I know there are big things happening out there, elsewhere. Though my battles are small, they’re, semantically, surprisingly similar. I do my best to keep the chaos at bay and leave the rest to the higher powers that be. (The higher powers being mostly infant mood swings and weather.)
I clean and then clean some more. Once the chaos is felt to be contained I decide it’s preferable that the children get fed. I imagine how messy things will get again once the cooking is done and tell myself I should just be content to move along in unison with our cyclical reality. I’d rather be in than out, with all its imperfections. I’m a good sport and embrace the delusion of there being any meaning to anything at all. Wholeheartedly.
I decide to make a beetroot pasta sauce. “Everyone’s a little anaemic in winter,” I hear a voice say. I’m not sure who it belongs to, but I remember someone telling me this a while ago. “Also, pink food,” my own inner voice says. “Could be fun in a crime scene sort of way.”
***
Mila is tugging at my pant leg. I pick her up. Zoe is destroying something in the background. It’s likely to be a plant.
I set the child down on the counter and let her dig around inside a coffee grinder with her bare hands as I compose a Deliveroo order for some groceries.
I mix water, yeast, sugar, and a half a cup of flour in a mixing bowl. Why not?
I send a snapchat to a friend: “what an endless day” it reads. And it’s only 10 am.
***
I get a phone call around 11. It’s the building management company calling about the mouse. “The pest control is here today inspecting the site, they’d like to see your balcony,” he says. I resist the urge to tell him it’s too late and we already named it. I say it’s fine and they’re welcome to.
My groceries arrive a few minutes after that. I put Mila back on the floor and say, excitedly: “Oh what’s this? Who’s that over there?” She runs to the door with me.
***
I unpack the groceries and read the recipe. It’s immediately apparent that I should have probably done this before making the order, and checked what it is I’m ordering. Now I have beetroot that’s soaked in vinegar, rather than regular beetroot. You see, the devil’s in the details, so I try to avoid them.
Either way, that’s probably not good. I forgot they do this putting beetroot in vinegar thing. I don’t understand the purpose of the exercise, since beetroot is really tasty on its own.
I decide to carry on and make the thing anyway.
Meanwhile, my pitta bread starter isn’t bubbling.
It’s likely to be fine, anyway. This is a pretty forgiving process. I used to get very concerned about things like whether the sponge is bubbling or not. Then I ascended to a higher plane in this baking journey.
And I can see from here these things are secondary to the enjoyment you get from just carrying on and making the thing anyway.
The mystery is half the fun: is it going to work at all? (“And the worst part is I'm still fucking hungry.”) I put in the rest of the flour, some oil, salt, and hope for the best as I put the bowl into the oven.
Our oven is entirely in German, courtesy of one of our offspring. We don’t know how to change it back, so hoping is all there is.
“Warmhalten” at around 40 degrees has never let me down, so I stick to that while proving the dough. Carry on, make the thing anyway.
***
I cut some carrot and cucumber sticks, put greek yoghurt into a bowl. To my relief this passes as an acceptable snack today.
I make a coffee and climb on top of the counter, taking stock of my kingdom. I check in on the reddit argument I’m having about a video game. Two sips in and five strong words later there’s a knock on the door.
The girls ignore it, so I guess have to get it. I make a mental note that I should train them to get the door for us, and giggle to myself. It’s the pest control man.
I show him a picture of the mouse, he seems perplexed: “How did such a small thing climb so high?” I say I don’t know. I wonder to myself if I should admit to having a sensory play accident there involving two small children and about 5 kg of rice, which was stuck inside the dents of the decking for weeks and weeks. I decide to leave the past in the past. We must always look to the future.
The Hows, the Whys… they’re irrelevant. What’s relevant is that the mouse isn’t paying rent.
Who’s to say why a mouse would climb onto a third story balcony? Who’s to say? We might never know. Could it be 5 kg of rice likely still lying trapped in the empty space under the decking? Maybe. Who’s to say?
The pest control man said he will leave a couple of boxes there, and come to check on them in a couple of weeks. As he was digging around his bag Zoe said: “Hello! My name is Zo Zo, I’m three years old!” The man said, hello Zo Zo.
“My daddy is at the office with all the other daddies,” she informed him.
When the man was done outside he said goodbye, I said thank you and have a good day, all that stuff. As he was walking towards the door Zoe said: “that was really nice!” The man laughed, and said: “Thank you!” Idk what to tell you, she’s delightful.
***
I fry some onion with garlic, dice the beetroot, throw that in, too. Then I put everything in the food processor with some feta cheese, salt and pepper, and blend. I multitask and hold the processor button as I knead the dough one-handed, feeling accomplished.
In the meanwhile Mila moved a chair to the cupboard, grabbed the dry pasta container and opened it. She’s sitting down in the middle of the living room, taking handfuls of macaroni and throwing them in all directions.
I consider for a moment whether I’m okay with it.
I decide to let her carry on and do the thing.
Things are good.
***
Zoe helps me roll the dough into balls, asking after each one: “Is this a ball?” I always say yes, even though it never is. Being a mother is sometimes just lying about dumb shit until they either learn to do things well, or the lying becomes too obvious; whichever happens first.
I attempt to show her how to roll the balls into flat circles, but she loses interest and goes to help her sister with the pasta.
It’s not long before Mila is crying, so I go to get her.
“She bit me!” Zoe says.
“Then why is she the one crying?” I ask.
“I pushed her,” Zoe responds, in her usual radically-honest-when-questioned manner.
“Aha…” I say. “Let’s try to take a deep breath next time we’re angry.”
Her response is a simple “No”. I agree to let her disagree and go back to my pitta breads. I’m a good sport and today we’re committed to just carrying on with the thing, anyway.
***
Once the pasta is ready I mix in the sauce. You can taste the vinegar, but it’s still quite nice. The children disagree with the concept of a pink dish and refuse to even try. I try not to let it overshadow the feeling of accomplishment, which is hard. I really didn’t think anyone could argue with pink food.
Life’s a mystery.
Pittas are ready to be fried up so I warm up a skillet. I get a text from a fellow neighbourhood mom about a playdate. I want to finish the pittas, so I tell her they’re welcome to come over. “Mama, mama, mama,” Mila reaches up to me, grabbing my leg.
At this point I have a whole pitta making operation in full swing, so I say later, later. Mila, dissatisfied with my actions, decides to drop her nappy and pee on the floor, as Zoe drops a plant, spilling the soil everywhere.
I assess the damage to my rapidly crumbling kingdom, while the raw pittas are oxidising with every passing minute. There’s a knock on the door.
I clean the floor and the child, open the door, hoover up the soil. Are we back on track?
Ah yes, the bread. Breathe.
***
When Zoe’s friend leaves I pick up my cold 4 hour old coffee and down it. Suddenly it’s 4 pm and time to start making dinner. With everything, we haven’t even been outside yet. It feels irrelevant.
As I clean up after the playdate I wonder if I can consider the day a success. Was I productive? What did I even do all day? There’s a tall stack of pitta breads on the table, wrapped in a tea towel. This is evidence, a reminder that at one point today I woke up feeling beautiful and in a fighting mood. I wonder if today was long enough to drain all the beautifulness out of me, and decide that’s unrealistic. Nothing that dramatic can happen in one day. This is good news.
Hard to believe now, looking at the flour in my hair and the messy kitchen and the uneaten bowls of pink pasta. But since the world keeps spinning, I reckon we might as well just carry on and do the thing anyway.
"I get a phone call around 11. It’s the building management company calling about the mouse. “The pest control is here today inspecting the site, they’d like to see your balcony,” he says. I resist the urge to tell him it’s too late and we already named it. " I loved this. I'm in awe of how you wrench so much humour and pathos out of a day like that. I'd have been begging the rodent guy to take me away in a cage.
Huh. I thought the girls would love pink food.