Home

We've been home for almost exactly 1 week. Time enough to:

unpack

do many, many loads of laundry

nearly catch up on mail and email

clean the house thoroughly, especially of cat fur

unpack everything downstairs except art, including 50 boxes of books in the library

resupply with groceries

run numerous errands

get a Christmas tree and decorate it

get my body's clock back on Pacific Standard Time

and whatever else I've been doing all week.

The cruise was fun and relaxing. We're not the social butterflies that one really needs to be to get the most out of these kinds of cruises, but we enjoyed the port stops, especially in the Canary Islands, met some good people and ate lots of good food. I especially appreciated the 7 at-sea days of pure relaxation. I was actually able to do a little beading, lots of reading, and watched several movies.

Randy's knee, it turns out, has a torn meniscus in 2 places, rather than just 1 place. He has scheduled surgery for February 4 in the hope that it will improve between now and then. Yeah. Right.

The sale of our Los Osos house has fallen through although the would-be buyer is now being difficult about wrapping things up so we can get on with another sale. Figures.

The cats are well. Other than Randy's knee, we are well. I can't believe we've done all this traveling this month without either one of us catching a virus of one sort or another. Must be some kind of record.

Since my goal is to be entirely unpacked and organized in our new house by January 1, I hit the ground running when we returned, unpacking the entire library in the first 2 days we were home. My studio is a mass/mess of boxes, but the storage closet upstairs will get cleaned out and straightened up first since that's where all the Christmas decorations are stored. I have hope. I haven't gotten back into the swing of my cooking project yet, but we did get to farmers' market this morning so I'm stocked again with veggies, including 2 kinds of heirloom winter squash that I'm anxious to try.

Poached eggs have been my thing this week. On the cruise ship there was a lovely lady chef who made fancy poached egg dishes at breakfast time. Fancy as in, well, my favorite had caviar on top! Unfortunately I didn't home in on her cooking station until the very end of the cruise after being enticed by several rounds of eggs benedict in the main dining room. At least I vowed to learn to poach eggs, something I've never before done in my entire life. I bought 2 of those versatile silicon egg-poaching cups earlier this week. I know that's cheating a little, but these are my baby steps. By my 3rd breakfast of poached eggs on English muffin this week I had the technique and timing down to my satisfaction. You want to "grease" the cups with butter before adding the eggs. My cooktop has a "simmer" setting on 2 of the burners, which is actually just a little cooler than what I consider a true simmer. Nine minutes, maybe 8.5, seems to be the perfect time at a simmer. This with the lid on the saucepan so the tops of the eggs cook, too. Of course I'll also take a stab at poaching eggs the hard way, but even Julia Childs uses those little perforated poaching baskets and even does a little pre-boil in-the-shell, so who am I to expect miracles of myself? On the other hand, Julia also makes those fancy decorated poached eggs in aspic.... Well, that's another chapter altogether.

Onward and upward and back to real life. Refreshed, renewed, cleaned, unpacked and organized.