Frogs

Good day, third coat of paint on the entry wall, then make a staggering numbers of labels, forty sheets before they're cut and trimmed. Sara calls at the end of the day, and I'm able to report serious progress. D tomorrow and Saturday so we should be in decent shape come Tuesday, when Sara arrives and we set the show. We have to put up a couple of panels and I have to paint pedestals. Walked over and got my truck, not knowing what it was going to cost, as I had told the guy to fix what he needed to align it. I go through there garage so I can talk with him and he says nothing was wrong, that I'd probably accumulated an ice chunk in the last cold spell. He checked everything and aligned it and the total bill was $42. I thought it was going to be hundreds, and do a little jig on my way out to the truck. Going home I'm thinking that if there is any snow left, it'll be at my house, and sure enough, there's a dirty pile at the bottom of the hill on Mackletree. The bottom of the driveway is a quagmire and I don't have my boots, but I can walk in the median, on leaves. The problem with that is that you can't actually what you're walking on because of the sodden leaves. My aluminum kitchen-mop handle walking-stick serves me well. It's very calm, and I'm walking slowly with a medium pack. I feel like the janitor at a Sherpa college. The sound around is rich, birds in the underbrush, a nice trickle of water in the grader ditch. I stop several times to look at crazy, stupid, tricked buds. There's going to be a horrific kill-off when we get a late winter blast. On that note, I get about half-way to the top, and I hear the frogs fucking. Saturnalia in the driveway puddles. I sneak up on them, so I can watch. This is so too early, four weeks anyway, that this generation of eggs and tadpoles is fodder, but the frogs seem to enjoy it. I can hear them now, as I write, through fairly well insulated walls and thermo-paned windows. They're loud, at an average Fuck-Fest, in the early spring, it approaches the sound of a small chainsaw. Soon as I get in the door I start a fire in the cookstove, the house is comfortable enough, but I want to cook. Some great looking little fillets of flounder at Kroger, and I had an idea about cooking them. Bought a parsnip and a bag of those small strange potatoes, original strains from Peru. These are good. I just scrub them, boil them in salted water with the parsnip, mash them with butter and cream. Serve anything on top of that. The little fillets are good, I just salt and pepper them, pat a few breadcrumbs into the surface, and sear them in a hot skillet, fruity olive oil, smear on a layer of Hellman's and a sprinkle of herbs, run them through the toaster oven. Hard to get any better than that, any easier.