always at sea level: Week 11

I had no sooner packed away the spiders, mice, bats and a skull, dismantled dummies and cleared away the cobwebs than my agenda turned to less exciting endeavours. Neglecting my routine of general cleaning and maintenance in favour of paper mache, cardboard cutouts, foraging for dead foliage and sorting through 100's of pictures - 300 snapped in total - I now had to do double time to get ready for the arrival of company.

Having 2 guys fly in for acouple days for Mike meant male conversation, for me it meant baking! The bread box and cookie jar have been sadly devoid of product this year as we are trying to cut down on the carbs and calories for awhile, so when I heard I was going to be able to break out the sugar, flour and chocolate I started to salivate. Oh what to bake, what do I crave, so much I want, so few meals to make.

In a frenzy, well maybe not exactly a frenzy more like a steady march, I found myself on my knees, up a ladder, inside, outside, upstairs and in the basement. Jobs that I had put off for another time found time. There's nothing like having strangers come into your home that spurs you to apply a bit more spit and polish than usual.

Two cookies jars now held my favorites, a plate of chocolate iced walnut topped brownies lay in wait. I had just put a carrot cake in the oven and was sampling, one must always sample for quality control, a rich cream cheese frosting when an email popped up titled... %4#? weather! This didn't bode well. In a nutshell gale force winds for the next couple of days – groceries delayed due to weather – faller had to change dates to come in. Don't they refer to this as “Murphy's Law”?

You can't fight mother nature so we'll try again another day - new date November 17^th. Till than the goodies, minus a big piece of cake :) , will have to be relegated to the freezer and for me time to sit back and catch up on some reading, maybe do some writing, walk the beach or just watch the world go by.

It just so happened that as I was watching the world go by a pod of killer whales swam into our bay. It's the first sighting for us. I always consider myself so lucky to be at the right place looking out the window at the right time to witness such a sight but than I asked myself “how much do we miss?”