I just snaked a kitchen drain, outside, in the snow, after opening a manhole cover. While baking bread. Where's my merit badge?

— Lyn Thorne-Alder (@lynthornealder) December 11, 2016

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsYep.

That was Sunday.

Our kitchen sink leads out – via at least 2, maybe 3 right turns – to a dry well (covered by, I shit you not, a Bell Telephone manhole cover (rather like this)), which means that when it clogs (which it does, on average, about once/year), it’s easiest to snake it from the outside (less turns).

So there I was. In the snow. Snaking a drain.

There really ought to be merit badges for things like that.

“While baking bread” is a little disingenuous; the bread was rising at the time. My first time without a recipe, and I think the only real fail was that the molasses I used to sweeten it overwhelmed the amaranth I added in as a test flavor. It’s a hearty, half-wheat-flour loaf with little amaranth crunchies, quite nice.

This was one of those weekends: haul firewood, wash dishes, snake the sink, bake some bread. T made a pressure-cooker (InstantPot) ham-hock soup with yellow lentils and black/white Urad Dal, which was super tasty with the bread. The house smelled of bread and soup all day Sunday, which is just about the most awesome way for the house to smell.

It’s nice, sometimes, just hunkering down and staying inside – or, at least, at home. You come in, you stand in front of the fire for ten minutes, and you’re all warm again.

And Merit – our feral cat, or at least the one who started that way – clearly agrees. Sometimes in the winter, you can see her look outside and remember what the outside was like when it snowed or rained. Then she curls up by the fire, too, everything in her body language saying It’s good to be inside.

It’s good to be inside. With the bread baking and the sink draining properly. It’s that sort of winter.

*purrs*

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