I designated today as a "day of rest" and, as such, decided that it was perfectly acceptable to achieve nothing. It's my new rule - I've realised that the most restful thing I can do is have no expectation on myself. Well, after a lazy start, I found myself in the kitchen faced with 3 carrier bags full of apples that were begging to be attended to. But it was "no-pressure" Sunday, so I felt I could act out of choice and not obligation - another discovery I've made is that I'm most productive when I'm resting. I do love a good bit of oxymoron.
Now there is a bit of background to this story. Firstly - and I"ll elaborate at a later date - I have decided that part of my current mission in life is to become a "home-maker". This is especially ironic if you knew me a couple of years ago and even now still quite a comedy concept, though I can at least bake bread these days.
The second relevant bit of history is that I went to a friend's for lunch on Wednesday and she had all kinds of fabulous things set up for processing apples from her tree. This included a muslin bag dripping into a bucket that was, by some sort of magic, making apple jelly. I went to bed that night wishing that I had apples with which to do such wonderfully homely things. My own mother had brought me some a while back but the best I could do was stew them in a last minute panic, then eat them just before they went off.
And then the very next morning one of my housemates offered me three bags full, as a gift from his grandparents orchard! What a fabulous opportunity. Unfortunately, I now have to start putting my expressed desires into action... always where the plan falls down I find.
Today, however, I made some progress. Out came the laptop and after googling for but a short while I found my three varieties:
Good for eating, or cooking, or both. What a win!
Of course, doing something as interesting as this made me decide once and for all that I had to get my new blog started - so I could share it with you lovely people. So I spent an age faffing with name ideas, background motifs and generally all sorts of time-wasting that only befits a day off. This means that I still don't quite know what to do with my pommes... but I have got an interesting fact:
"Apples, quinces, pears, peaches, plums, apricots, cherries, blackberries, raspberries and strawberries -- whether wild or cultivated -- are all relatives of the roses."
Isn't that fascinating?!
So what's with the url? Well, 'communikate.etc' was taken and I didn't really know what to do about that: torn between finding a new name entirely and just having a different web address. I'd temporarily given up when another of my housemates - to whom I'd extolled the merits of the coxes - came back downstairs to share his rather unpleasant surprise with me... Nice.
Now I'm not being pessimistic but "maggots" do seem to get everywhere, don't they? It's just fact that the world ain't perfect yet. You know what though, I find that actually it is alright, when I have the right perspective. I mean, shit happens - sometimes you get a maggot, sometimes you get half of one - but the apple is bigger and juicier and you can always spit the little buggers out...
