Thursday, June 25 2020

Dear Journal,

Good morning, everyone! Happy Thursday. I hope that this morning you're feeling enough energy to make it through the rest of the week - or at least to Friday morning, and then I suppose we can just coast into the weekend from there.

It feels good to get a proper, early start this morning. It appears the trusty backup alarm method worked, and I didn't even need to resort to the second alarm either. Perhaps just the mere threat of TODAY IS ALRIGHT FOR TONIIIIIGHT blaring through my phone into our quiet bedroom was enough to prevent my subconscious from snoozing the morning away. More likely, I was already 25% awake from taking a turn with Miles a few hours ago. I awoke sometime between four and five in the morning to an angry, hissing baby that evidently just needed to get a big fart out. Getting out of bed, I laid him flat against my stomach. He grunted and squirmed for about twenty minutes, and maybe I was just tired, but I swear I could feel the little gas bubbles building up in his gut before he let them all out with one magnificent bout of flatulence. It was almost an honor being part of another's tremendous sense of relief.

"Thank you honey," mumbled Marissa from bed. Miles sneezed, causing himself to fart even louder, and I chuckled into the silence of our four in the morning bedroom.

Sip. So how are we feeling today? What's on your mind? Today I'm thinking about sourdough. My personal quest for the perfect sourdough sandwich bread continues. I made a batch yesterday, extending the bulk rise through the whole night at room temperature which regrettably produced a soupy, over-proofed dough. One of the most frustrating parts of making bread is the moment when you take the lid off your pan, expecting to see an active and bubbling specimen eagerly breaching the top of the container, but it instead looks exactly the way you left it five hours earlier. Dead. Flat. Same.

I still baked it. While over-proofed dough doesn't make for a very sturdy sandwich, it's delicious in its own way. I started another batch yesterday, and this time to prevent over-proofing, I've left the dough to bulk rise in a straight walled pitcher, marking the starting position clearly with a thick streak of blue painter's tape. It will continue its bulk rise throughout the day, and probably be ready for the oven this evening. Stay tuned.

With all that's going on in our city, the fact that bread is the thing on my mind today speaks to how relaxing our day was yesterday. As tensions between protesters, police, and politicians grew downtown, Rodney and I played hockey in the front of the house while Marissa caught up on yardwork.

Rodney's aim has been getting better. His favorite YouTube channel, Dude Perfect, films these videos where they play golf on a golf course using frisbees, tennis rackets, and hockey sticks, and ironically I think watching these silly All Sports Golf Battle videos has indirectly taught him how to aim with a hockey stick.

And Rodney hit another developmental milestone yesterday. In the morning, getting him out of his room, he brought me over to his workstation and showed me the word blippi written in the center of his desk with a crayon. Actually, he omitted the l, but nevertheless, that was the first word that he had written on his own.

After wrapping up outside and putting Rodney down for a nap, Marissa joined me in the basement for some studio time, and I enjoyed a solid hour of zonking out in front of some video games. I played the game Skate 3. Perhaps it's a little early to be brushing up on my Skate skills, but what can I say? The announcement of the next Skate game has me excited.

For dinner, I thawed some frozen cod and served it with a butter cream sauce. Lacking white wine and terragon, I was forced to sub in just parsley and some fresh lemon juice. The sauce turned out great, but I undercooked the potatoes.

"I think my potatoes taste fine," said Marissa, trying to ease my sense of personal failure. I just stared at her, crunching my potato in my teeth like a crisp apple until she started to laugh.

As Rodney was getting ready for the night, I tucked Miles into Rodney's bed just for a gag. Rodney threw his voice for Miles attempting to add to the joke, but I couldn't understand what he was saying. So I just laughed. A baby tucked into a big oversized bed is enough of a joke at face value, isn't it?

Marissa and I retreated upstairs for nightly workouts. While Miles cried away in his crib, I grunted through my push-ups and sit-ups.

"Workout sucked tonight," said Marissa out of breath. "I could barely get through my push-ups."

"We... ate a lot of butter tonight," I laughed. "That's what I'm feeling in my gut. Working out with french food in your stomach is an extreme challenge."

We poured beers, popped a bag of popcorn, and settled in on the couch to finish our three day long marathon of watching Apocalypse Now.

"You know what the mark of a good movie is?" asked Marissa. "It doesn't drag out the ending. It just ends."

"I think it was the fact that the movie was three and a half hours long, and yet I couldn't look away from the screen for the last half hour," I added. "I'm pretty sure my mouth was open too."

Thanks for stopping by this morning. I hope you have a wonderful Thursday, and I'll see you tomorrow, reader.