Peeking into the rock

I cannot express how bored I am getting. This is dumb because nobody's keeping me inside. Anyway, tonight I went to folk dance class for the first time since surgery. Six weeks! I'm not really ready to dance properly, but it was really nice to just be in that place with those people, and to do some kind of dance approximations.

Mostly I sat in a chair and tapped my feet. Sometimes I replicated the dance moves more or less to a highly truncated degree while sitting, and sometimes I just tapped my toes, and sometimes I did my flexion and extension exercises while I watched. A few times I got up and followed along in back of the line because I can't really move fast enough to keep up with most dances. Two dances were sedate enough, just walking really, that I could join the circle and that was terrific.

To accomplish this I spent the afternoon elevating and icing my leg and guess what I'm doing now? That's right, icing and elevating. And wearing compression stockings.

There was one dance I was not really familiar with but it was so attractive that I could not resist exclaiming "That's what I got surgery for! Six months, and I'll be doing that one!"  I don't know if I will be, really, but it was pretty exciting to watch people doing it.

And I really love my folk dance folks. It was really nice to see tham and watch them dance and hear them talk.

On a related front, did I tell you I have my second surgery date? September 23. I'm just about halfway between surgeries right now.

And I bought a step stool to use to get onto my bike when it is on the trainer. And noticed how weak my legs are, that stepping on to the step stool is a challenge. That's going to change.

This week I have cooked.

I made, for last weekend, agua fresca de fresas y sandia (Mexican plain fruit punch with strawberries and watermelon, but also oranges and lemons). I also made some very nice sweet potato biscuits from the sweet potato puee I froze a while back. The rest of the meal was nice but nothing to write home about.

But! I also, later in the week, made liverwurst, a project I have been wanting to do forever, and it came out pretty good and cost less than seven dollars a pound.  Maybe six? Next time, I will use ham hock instead of bacon for the porky part.  This is what I did: I had .7 pound each of chicken and beef livers and a bit over a pound of chicken thigh meat.  I put these with a head of garlic peeled but not cut (a head, not a clove) and half a twelve-ounce package of bacon into a big pasta pot strainer insert, and in the main pot I put a half a large celery root, some celery seed, an onion,and water to cover everything.  I put the insert into the pot and simmered it for about half an hur, and then I ground it in a meat grinder, fine blade, mixing in enough brother to make it slimy and also mixing in a micriscopic amount of sage (I would have put in more but I only had what i had), hot paprika creme, mustard, black pepper, salt, even a pinch of sugar.  I got it all gooshed together, adding enough liquid to make it the right texture (which is wetter than it will be when it is refrigerated), and also added the fat from the rest of the bacon. The next day it was yummy but it could have used less bacon and more sage.  I made about three pounds all told and put half of it in the freezer. The rest of it is gone now.

Today I am thinning my plum tree and I have found recipes to handle the green plums. And also an obscure reference to "Norwegian olives," meaning salted green plums.  So I am still gathering some more (the tree sets fruit like gangbusters) so I can shove them tightly in the jar.

Also, when I was weeding, I discovered that I had a whole pie worth of rhubarb stalks so I cut them and cleaned them and put them in the freezer for if one of my friends wants a rhubarb thing.  I planted it for the nice fellow: rhubarb is not my weakness, it baffles me slightly as food, though I chomp on sourgrass as much as the next little kid.  But the greater rhubarb wonder is that at some point, it sent up a mighty stalk and it must have flowered when I wasn't looking, because the stalk was covered with dock-like brown-ripe seeds, of which I have recovered many, in case somebody wants to grow rhubarb from seed.

The little yellow plum tree around the corner has begun dropping plums but they are not wonderful this year but I have plans still to go to University Terrace park and check out the plums up there.  I actually used all my plum jam last year.  I liked it better than the blackberry jam, of which I still have kind of a lot.  I also have two very large packages of tiny pineapple pieces in juice, which I froze though I think they are supposed to be the equivalent of cans.  So my freezer now contains: a large bag of pecans, a tiny bag of black walnuts, two bags of sweet potato puree, two bags of pineapple, a bag of rhubarb, a container of liverwurst, a bag of beans I cooked, and from the supermarket, a package of fajita-sliced beef and a big bag of peas.  It is a normal-sized freezer.  My refrigerator is not the very smallest one I could find, but it is the smallest one I could find with an energy star rating and glass shelves (wire ones are not cleanable).

on another front, I saw a boy at folk dancing last night -- if I was his age, I'd have had a crush on hjim for five minutes (before I saw the iron cross tattooed on his arm).  He looked a little like a much prettier Maxim Gorky, small -- he was shorter than one of the guys I often watch to figure out short men's body dynamics for the novel, and his feet looked almost as small as mine.  He has that thick, thick hair that curls upward when it's not being severely chastised, and I tried to imagine it darker and longer: yes, I think I figured out exactly what Yanek looks like.  I've had descriptors for him all along but I keep changing my mind -- I see him through different characters' eyes, and that skews things because some of them have pretty weird ideas about him.  When he is very small and the Duchess thinks he is a pet elf, more or less: when he is with his best friend, the peasant boy, who thinks Yanek is an abandoned child: when he is older, and some people think he is a rake, and others think he is a snob, and others think he is a prude (yes, well, nobody has very much data because Yanek tries to hide, mostly).  But watching that boy move, and thinking about how this other person held his drum, and all that, I think I got it.

It's not important: I'm not going to be drawing pictures of him.  But it's pleasant to know what features the people in the story are yammering at,