Yesterday morning, I walked downstairs in the dark, barefoot. Crossing the living room, I stepped on something weirdly soft and squishy. I switched on the light and —

HOLY HECK THERE’S A DEAD MOUSE ON THE FLOOR.

I whisper-shrieked, cursed (my older son witnessed the whole sordid debacle and later soberly announced to my older daughter, “I will forever remember November 6, 2018 as the day I first heard my mother say the F-word”), and then hop-ran to the bathroom to scrub my contaminated toes.

(We still have no idea how a dead mouse materialized on our floor. Best we can figure, it sprung one of our traps — occasionally we find them sprung…and empty — got injured, and then finally, days later, gave up the ghost.)

Now I’m scared to walk around the house in the dark.

 

This morning I fell while running. I was chugging up the gravel road when I heard a large dump-truck approaching the upcoming intersection. My younger son was riding his bike up ahead, so I had looked up to keep an eye on things. Suddenly, my foot nicked a rock and I hit the dirt, skinning my knee and tearing a hole in my leggings in the process. It’s only a small hole — a pinprick really — but still, it’s POP: Proof of Pain.

My computer is dying. When we were in Puerto Rico, some of the keys stopped working so I bought a wireless keyboard. But now the wireless keyboard keys are beginning to stick. The backspace key, especially, is cantankerous. I have to pound on it with all my strength (think manual typewriter-type pounding) which makes the already painful process of backspacing just that much more demoralizing.

Just so you know, this is what my face looks like when I’m type-pounding:

Have you seen Five Foot Two, the Netflix documentary about Lady Gaga? I’d barely known who she was — just some singer sporting outrageously ridiculous clothes — but then I (and my husband, too!) watched the video and now I can’t stop thinking about it.

I have so many questions, like:

*In the midst of such pressure and chaos, how does she tap into her center and find space to create? 

*How can a person live in multiple houses and ever feel at home?
*How can she continuously put herself out there and still have a sense of self?
*She’s a singer. She smokes. WHY.
*How can a person dance all over a huge stage, and up and down stairs, in sky-high stillettos and not break her ankles?
*Doesn’t she ever get cold waltzing around in her tiny t-shirts and super short shorts?
*And about those short short shorts: are they even comfortable?

That night after watching the movie I was so plagued with questions that I had trouble sleeping, no joke. 

Earlier this week we hosted a Salvadoran man for a couple nights. He was part of an advocacy group that’s traveling across the country in a bus, educating people about the plight of immigrants with Temporary Protective Status. Our town was the last stop before the group’s final destination, Washington DC.

I didn’t get to visit with our guest very much — both nights he arrived at our house shortly before bedtime, and in the mornings I left for work before people got up (and after crunching on dead mice) — but my husband did. Later, over supper, he filled us in on our guest’s history of attempted forced military recruitment, asylum seeking, police brutality, prison sentences, etc. — so many experiences that I can’t even begin to comprehend.

The kids reported that he made himself right at home, digging through the fridge for the butter, heating up the pot of beans I’d left on the stove. The first morning, he made them eggs for breakfast and then washed up the dishes afterwards. The second morning when I got back from work, our guest was already gone. Looking around, I noticed he’d emptied the trashes, scrubbed the bathroom sink, made his bed, and, once again, washed all the breakfast dishes.

As I fixed lunch for the kids and me, the lingering scent of our guest’s cologne stinging my nostrils, I found myself wondering: Who was this man who’d been thrown in prison multiple times, twice fled his beloved country, chattered to us in Spanish without pausing to draw breath, and made my children breakfast?

Suddenly, the quote that hangs on my wall by the dining room table, the one linking hospitality and strangers with the entertainment of angels, popped into my head, and I chuckled to myself. Oh yes, I thought, but of course.

Go well, stranger-friend.

This same time, years previous: the quotidian (11.6.17), the quotidian (11.7.16), for the time change, “How are you different now?”, yesterday, let me sum up.

I have a weakness for coffee cake. (I also have a weakness for fresh sourdough bread, pricey cheeses, and Swedish fish, but let’s stick with coffee cake for right now, okay?) I think it has something to do with the name: coffee cake. Coffee and cake, two of my favorite things in one title, win and win. Or maybe it’s the idea of a cake made specifically to eat with coffee? I don’t know, but whenever I spy a recipe for coffee cake, I have to read it. It’s a compulsion.

However, in spite of my abiding love and affection, coffee cakes are often (usually? always?) either a little too dry or a little too fluffy. Coffee cakes, according to moi, ought to be dense, heavy almost, and very, very moist. And even though coffee cakes are fashioned from a string of ordinary ingredients — butter, vanilla, cream — those ingredients are (verily, I say unto you!) some of the best things in the world, and their flavors ought to sing through loud and clear.

So anyway, the other week when cool weather struck, I got hit with the need for coffee cake. Or wait — maybe I got the idea for coffee cake when I deep-cleaned my pots-and-pans cupboard and discovered a handsome tube pan hanging out in the back corner? Ah well. Either way, a coffee cake craving was sparked.

Reading through recipes, I discovered an as-yet-untried coffee cake recipe in my hefty Cook’s Illustrated Cookbook. True to (their) form, the method seemed unnecessary complicated, but then I read this:

Rather than creaming the butter and sugar, which made the cake too light and airy, we cut softened butter and some of the sour cream into the dry ingredients, then added the eggs and the rest of the sour cream; the result was a tighter crumb.

Well then.

The cake was what I was after. Like, exactly. So dense, so rich, so flavorful! The only problems were 1) I trashed the kitchen in the process, and 2) the cinnamon sugar mixture partially sunk so the swirly effect got lost.

In an attempt to solve the sinking sugar issue, I made the cake again. (I also made the book’s cream cheese coffee cake which I did not like at all.) The second time around, the problem was even worse. Almost all the cinnamon sugar sunk to the bottom, creating a bottom layer of chewy caramel. Which isn’t necessarily a tragedy. In fact, some might even consider cake bottom caramelization an asset.

I still haven’t solved the problem — am I beating the batter too long? should I reduce the amount of cinnamon sugar? increase/decrease the oven temp? — but I’m gearing up to make it again. If I learn anything new, I’ll update.

Sour Cream Coffee Cake
Adapted from the Cook’s Illustrated Cookbook.

for the streusel:
¾ cup each flour and sugar
½ cup packed brown sugar, divided
2 tablespoons cinnamon
2 tablespoons butter
1 cup pecans

Put the flour, sugar, cinnamon, and ¼ cup of the brown sugar in a food processor. Whirl to combine. 

Remove 1¼ cups of the flour-sugar mixture, and transfer it to a small bowl and add the remaining ¼ cup of brown sugar — this is your streusel filling.

Add the butter and the pecans to the mixture that’s still in the processor and pulse until pebbly — this is your streusel topping.

for the cake:
2¼ cups flour
1¼ cups sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
¾ teaspoon each baking soda and salt
12 tablespoons butter, cut into chunks
1½ cups sour cream, divided
4 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla

Stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add the butter and ½ cup of the sour cream and beat gently until the mixture comes together. Add the remaining sour cream, eggs, and vanilla and mix just until combined. (If you beat it longer, the cake will be lighter — not what we want here.)

Pour about a third of the batter into a greased tube pan. Sprinkle in half of the streusel filling mixture. Another third of the batter and the remaining streusel mixture. Pour in the last third of the batter and top with the pecan streusel.

Bake the cake at 350 degrees for 50-60 minutes. Let the cake cool in the pan at room temp for 30 minutes before cutting around the sides with a table knife and gently inverting the cake onto a plate, streusel side down. Remove the tube pan, set a cooling rack on top of the cake and flip again. Allow the cake to cool completely before transfering to a serving dish.

This same time, years previous: apple dumplings, cinnamon pretzels, 2015 garden stats and notes, chatty time, posing for candy, why I’m spacey, homemade Greek yogurt.