Saturday, July 18, 2015

Pudding, Steak, and Cake

I've decided to devote mornings to priming the rental house. It's been close to a hundred degrees for forty-five days this month alone, and it may not pay to put off painting until it cools down, because it's possible it will remain this temperature until approximately 100,000 years after the death of Sen. Mitch McConnell (Rep--Kingdom of Coal). But it's been horribly warm in the mornings too, and that is how I discovered the precise temperature at which primer turns into pudding and slides off the house.

It's always something, with pudding. You put in all the ingredients and then you stir and stir and stir over low heat and nothing ever seems to be happening and you re-check the recipe and sure enough it does say "over low heat" but you start to lose confidence and you crank up the burner a little and start casting a longing eye toward the drawer with the cornstarch in it, and then all of a sudden, BAM, pudding. In fact, pudding that can stand up and march out of the pan. So it's all very temperature-dependent. And the primer on the rental house turned into pudding at precisely 10:38am, and when I checked the temperature graph for the day I found out that it was, at that moment, a bazillion degrees. So mark that down.

If I'd waited until afternoon, I could have stuck my paintbrush in the can and pulled out a can-shaped block of primer on a stick. It's fucking hot, is what I'm saying. Dave, as usual, went for a long walk and when he came back he was brown all the way through and his juices ran clear. I spent some time outside also, and by mid-afternoon I'd started to pull away from the sides of the pan and spring back lightly when pressed in the middle. I was a little flat, but that's because I don't have any eggs anymore. I should be presentable with a nice topping of the little crisp, crumbly bits that used to be my garden. So we're totally ready for company, if they should happen to be cannibals.

I've had some experience with this nonsense. I grew up in what would have been the shadow of Washington, D.C., if it had any shadows in the summertime. We coped. We opened up the house at night and exhausted the air out with a fan and then sealed it up tight in the morning and drew the shades, and usually we could get all the way to early afternoon before having to lie down on the linoleum in front of the little round black oscillating fan, breathing shallowly, waiting to die, and dreaming that some day someone would invent air conditioning.

And someone did, and we all love it. Even though it is helping make everything hotter, we all love it.

39 comments:

  1. mmmm, pudding....'scuse me while I head to the kitchen.....

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    1. Let me know how many hours you need to stir to make pudding on low heat. I'll never find out.

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    2. My recipe takes about ten minutes from start to finish; it's cornflour, sugar, cocoa and milk.

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    3. Saya sangat bersyukur atas rahmat yg diberikan kepada saya dibulan ini karna alhamdulillah melalui MBAH RAWA GUMPALA saya sekaran sudah bisa sukses atas nomor yg diberikan kepada saya dan saya yg dulunya cuma seorang TKW dari singapur yg gajinya tidak pernah mencukupi kebutuhan keluarga saya dikampun dan alhamdulillah berkat bantuan MBAH RAW GUMPALA kini saya sudah bisa pulang kampun,saya bersama keluarga dikampun sudah punya usaha sendiri dan saya tidak pernah menyanka kalau saya bisah seperti ini,jika anda ingin seperti saya silahkan hubungi MBAH RAWA GUMPALA di nomor 085-316-106-111...karna alhamdulillah saya menan nomor togel dari MBAH dan kalau uang indonesia 750 juta,,ini bukan rekayasa dari saya dari IBU RISKA.untuk lebih lenkapnya silahkan buka SITUS MBAH RAWA GUMPALA












      Saya sangat bersyukur atas rahmat yg diberikan kepada saya dibulan ini karna alhamdulillah melalui MBAH RAWA GUMPALA saya sekaran sudah bisa sukses atas nomor yg diberikan kepada saya dan saya yg dulunya cuma seorang TKW dari singapur yg gajinya tidak pernah mencukupi kebutuhan keluarga saya dikampun dan alhamdulillah berkat bantuan MBAH RAWA GUMALA kini saya sudah bisa pulang kampun,saya bersama keluarga dikampun sudah punya usaha sendiri dan saya tidak pernah menyanka kalau saya bisah seperti ini,jika anda ingin seperti saya silahkan hubungi MBAH RAWA GUMPALA di nomor 085-316-106-111...karna alhamdulillah saya menan nomor togel dari MBAH dan kalau uang indonesia 750 juta,,ini bukan rekayasa dari saya dari IBU RISKA.untuk lebih lenkapnya silahkan buka SITUS MBAH RAWA GUMPALA


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  2. It's a record-breaking heat wave for Portland, or so I hear. Not that the Kingdom of Coal will ever admit there's anything going fundamentally wrong with the climate.

    Pluto's mountains of solid ice are starting to sound pretty good right now.

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  3. Macon, Georgia. That's all I need to say.

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  4. The photo looks like the 50's, maybe very early 60's....and your family had a Peugeot?? You were living near DC, was your dad hauled up in front of HUAC and McCarthy?

    We had a too warm spell here, but thankfully it cools down into the 40's and 50's at night. Butte is about the same altitude as Timberline.

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    1. That Peugeot 403 replaced our gray Studebaker with the suicide doors. I'm thinking maybe 1960. I will say my father was a big proponent of UnAmerican Activities, in general. This is one of my favorite photos from childhood--I think I used it before. What was mom thinking? "Smile!"

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  5. Not to be adding fuel to your misery or anything but we are having what I think of as the perfect summer this year, nice temperatures in the daytime and cooling off at night. And by nice temperatures I mean 22 to 27 C (72-80F) daytime ... but I have to say last summer here was hotter than heck and started early and ended late, and our winter was snow and more snow and yet more snow until even I was sick of it, so maybe it was just our turn to have some good weather luck. Or some odd conditions due to global warming. Whichever it is. We are a peninsula, with most everything just a tad above sea level, so we're all going to have swimming pools in our yards - and in our houses - well before other parts of the continent, so don't be jealous of us this summer, pretty please ...

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    1. Everybody is having everybody else's weather. I saw a Facebook plea from somebody in Colorado begging the Pacific Northwest to come take their weather back. In a heartbeat!

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    2. I think that we may have your weather here in Delaware. It's been raining and/or overcast unrelentingly. Our tomatoes have gone on strike, and say that they will stay green until they get some sun. Fortunately, there have been a few "scab" tomatoes that turned red anyway, and were promptly eaten. I never thought I'd have worse Seasonal Affective Disorder in summer than I get in the winter!

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    3. mimimanderly is right. You've got her weather. I grew up (allegedly) in her town in the days before air conditioning. How did my species even survive?

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    4. Let alone the million years' worth of people that came before us. Uh, we're princesses now.

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  6. It's HOT in Los Angeles, too!!

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    1. Isn't it usually? I think I've only been there once. On the freeway. Terrified. Trying to stay in the right lane and finding that it kept turning into the middle lane.

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  7. Have a couple of friends in Portland who claim they now look like Dali's clocks. We have had a temperate summer but with the entire summer's rain arriving in June. A friend in Canberra is coping with snow (even though it's winter there, they don't "do" snow). Karma is a'cumin in. Lude sing goddamn.

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    1. Now I've got that song in my head! Not bad though.

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  8. Oh dear. I had to turn the heating down as I read about this slice of hell. We are (well I am) enjoying winter. My friends and family long for summer, but I am perfectly happy with the crispness in the air. I would be happy for more crispness but soooo prefer this to the sweaty season.
    And, as usual, this is a brilliantly written post. I very carefully didn't sip any tea while I read it, and don't have to clean the computer screen. I am learning.

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    1. Winter? Yum. I can take gray day after gray day. Summer is okay but it's way overrated, except for the tomatoes.

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  9. the temperature in the western Maine mountains has been in the upper sixties most of this week with nights dropping into the fifties. perhaps you need a vacation - you should come on over - the water's fine; but bring a jacket
    the Ol'Bizzard

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    1. I'm on vacation starting tomorrow. Not getting quite as far as Maine, but mid-Massachusetts and the Adirondacks. I understand it's black fly season. (sigh)

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  10. We have been having unseemly weather for the near-Seattle area these days, up in the 90s for too damn long. Construction schedules being what they are, the assisted living facility where I live didn't mean to schedule it this way, but it just happened that the tie-in of power to the big addition meant our scheduled power outage was going to happen on one of those 90+ degree days. No A/C for the sweating seniors. Lots of pitchers of ice water, open doors and windows, sitting outdoors under the covered porch in the shade and it wasn't too bad. Nobody melted into greasy spots and the ambulance didn't have to come even once. Boring day at the old folks' home.

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    1. And did you all sit around and croon Red River Valley while Clem whittled on the porch? Somehow we survived without it. I like AC as much as the next person when I'm hot, but people have it on way too much, and way too cold.

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  11. Ya know, it does not have to be done immediately! And there are people you can pay to do it!!

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  12. We got above 80 twice this summer, so far. The surface temperature of Lake Superior is about 40F (5C) by now. If I need to cool down I dip my toes, but not much else, in that.

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    1. That sounds kind of ideal. You do have mosquitoes, though, right?

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  13. And near enough 2,000kms north of Elephants Child, in the State that likes to call itself "Sunshine" where they grow stuff like bananas and mango and coconuts...it's the coldest it's been for 30 years.Like, 3" of snow.No snow on the coast, but damn! it's cold at 5am.My Man is painting, perfectly safe from pudding syndrome.

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    1. I might have had the sucker done by now if I had that weather. No painting after 11:30am, and some days I didn't even venture out.

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  14. Well, Murr, that's a surefire way of selling us on Portland. Our San Francisco summer has been ridiculously cold. I can't tell you how cold exactly because we can't see the thermometer on the back deck through the fog.

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    1. You'd best hurry up. The only thing hotter than our summer is the real estate market.

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  15. Since I live near D.C. the weather "most" of this summer has been very tolerable. I have been able to garden almost every day, although we have gotten a ton of rain. I think we have your weather. Anyway, today is supposed to be back in the 90's and dew point at 70!!

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    1. "Dew point." I know what that's really called. Bleah.

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  16. "Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum." (This paragraph has been visiting me every day during this, our first summer in The Southern Piedmont of NC. Like an ear worm, but...lit worm, eye worm...ew...what to call it? Whatever, it usually shows up around 9:30 a.m., while I'm closing all the blinds and making sure the ceiling fans are all spinning counter clockwise. And now, I'll think of BAM, pudding.)

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    1. At least we don't have to wear stiff collars, but I do like the three-o'clock nap idea. Good luck. Bleah. Bleah.

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  17. I was a little flat, but that's because I don't have any eggs anymore. -

    Thank you! And thank God I wasn't reading coffee when I read this.

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    1. Now I'm in New York and the humidity is cranked up to high. What fresh hell is this?

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