Ah, Sundays

It's been a long, quiet, but not lonely day. Sometimes on days like this I have to gear myself up to do the little things that need doing. But I planted the cyclamen I bought for the window boxes, pulled up the sweet potato vines that obviously do not like these chilly nights, watered plants, and did a lot of little chores like that. My yoga session was much much better than yesterday, and I experimented with a new routine that Elizabeth tried to teach me. By myself, with no one watching, I do better at new poses.
But it was also a day of mess-ups. I baked peanut-butter cookies this morning, following my mom's recipe. I really did freeze all but the two I'd smushed getting the pans out of the oven. Jordan is on South Beach and so has made me very aware of sugar content--do you realize how much sugar is in old-fashioned peanut butter cookies? One cup brown, and 3/4 cup white. Good golly. And somehow I measured out too much white, and while trying to put it back in the carton--it now comes in something that looks like a milk carton--I spilled it all over the counter and the floor. Sugar is not the easiest thing to clean up.
Then I tried to replace a ceiling flood light in the kitchen. You have to use one of those extenders that wrap around the bulb. I tried and tried last night, decided I was getting frustrated and would try again this morning. First try: I somehow broke the bulb, shoved the screw-in part of it right down into the bulb. So then of course I had to vacuum so the animals wouldn't get glass in their paws. Wywy, the cat, has been acting weirdly the last couple of days--she (he, it) who wouldn't touch dry food, now won't touch canned food but does eat the dry. Still doesn't seem as ravenous as he used to. Maybe the dry has more bulk.
And then, trying to clean green beans, for my stir-fry supper, I spilled salt all over. I clean them by rustling them around in salt water and then rinsing--another of my mom's tricks. Fortunately I rinsed them well enough that they weren't salty--I stir-fried scallops, grape tomatoes, green beans, two bites of broccoli left from last night, and mushrooms. Last week I served poached scallops when I meant them to be sauteed. I learned a lesson--do the scallops first, and dust them with a bit of flour. Remove from pan, saute the vegetables, and return the scallops until all is heated.
But my biggest mess-up was a computer one. I am reading through the edited manuscript for my cookbook (due out in Feburary--everyone hold your breath!) It's one of those deals where you have to position the cursor just right and then click either accept or reject. With recipes and quantities, there's a lot of that, because the editor standardized my haphazard approach to cooking.By late last night I had gotten through the preface, one and a half chapters. Toward the end of the evening I hit something which highlighted eveything in yellow--very annoying and I didn't know how to undo it. Went to bed and was almost asleep when I realized that I might not have saved it. Ever since the installation of U-Verse, my computer has been going to sleep if I leave it for long at all. So I stumbled up and saved eveything. This morning it had the strangest formatting I've ever seen, and I had no idea how to fix it. Fortunately I had the email with the original edited mss. so I had to start all over. I am now well into the third chapter, and I'm quitting for the evening, before I get so tired I goof it up again. It's very repetitious, mechanical work--and yet addictive. You think, "I'll just do one more recipe" and you keep going.
The book--called Cooking My Way Through Life with Kids and Books--is a memoir cookbook and has a long, funny story behind it. But I'm saving that story for when I am, I hope, asked to talk about the book.
I've re-charged my Kindle and found a mystery on it that I'm really enjoying, so that's my project for the rest of the evening.