Saturday breakfast

I’m not writing in my actual journal very often, because I’m daily writing posts to eventually upload to my blog instead, which is an interesting turn of events. There are interesting things that happen when you write regularly about what’s happening. As events play out, I find myself narrating in my head, thinking through what happens and styling prose to properly describe it. I don’t know if that actually improves my writing, but it’s interesting, anyway.

I got up this morning and did yoga before reporting to the kitchen. Today is my first Saturday here, and I do not have an expected time to be working. After doing some yoga and getting dressed, I went to the kitchen. Everybody else was sleeping in too. Only the people that live here are here, and Mr. L:ucas went to Placencia to visit his daughter, which he apparently does most every weekend. The fire was not yet lit, so I set about getting a fire going so I could heat some water for oatmeal.

We’ve been experimenting with banking coals, so I sifted through the ash first to see if any coals had been properly banked, and they had not. I made a little nest of newspaper, kindling, and then bigger pieces of wood and hunted down the lighter. It rained yesterday, and was more humid than is typical, and everything had to dry out before it was ready to burn. It was very frustrating. I have taught countless boy scouts how to construct a fire, and I know exactly how it works, but when it comes down to it, your fuel has to be dry or it will not burn. After many tries, I finally got a little fire going that I was confident would burn, and then set about refilling the tea kettle with hot water. It was at this point that the first person besides myself came out to the kitchen.

Most days I eat oatmeal for breakfast, with a little sugar and cinnamon in it. It’s a low effort, tasty breakfast. Sometimes I have hot cocoa with my breakfast too, but today I did not. I have had eggs with my breakfast too, once. It depends on how hungry I am. I had a big lunch yesterday, and a big dinner, and then oatmeal. That should be enough, but I am still hungry. I cleaned up the dishes after breakfast and then plugged in my laptop to do this writing. Now that it is pretty much writ, I think I will see about finding a fresh orange and maybe cooking some eggs.

(This post, written on Saturday, illustrates the fact that my posts are lagging a few days behind when they were written.)