Time without anyone’s name on it

  • walkingclem-in-rain2_sm.jpgGreg and I are going through Dave Ramsey’s “Finan­cial Peace Uni­ver­sity” series of classes at church, and they teach you need to give every dol­lar a name before the month starts. It’s a fine way of con­dens­ing the power of a bud­get down into a few words, but this after­noon, I real­ize that I’m liv­ing an inverted ver­sion of it.

    Greg is out of town on a quick busi­ness trip, you see, and so the house is quiet. Or the house would be quiet, if Clemen­tine didn’t need to be the Town Crier of Hound-town every half hour or so.

    walkingclem-in-rain2.jpgSilly me, I thought that the non-stop rain of the last week would have been a guar­an­tor of some real peace and quiet, because it means that even on days when the sun dares to peek out — as it’s doing now — the lawns are too wet to be mowed. So you can almost feel all the good Mid­west­ern­ers being sullen and restive in their houses, look­ing out at the yard and know­ing that it’s laugh­ing cal­lously at their forced inertia.

    But that doesn’t stop birds from fight­ing in the trees, or cats from sashay­ing up and down the street, or dogs from occa­sion­ally get­ting out of their yards and trot­ting idly about (unless they spy the afore­men­tioned cats, in which case both par­ties pick up the pace a lit­tle). And all of these events, plus many more that I’m appar­ently too blind to see, become occa­sions for a hearty bark-fest. (“HEY! I’m the dog here, and I see you!” “HEY! Don’t you dare walk in my ter­ri­tory with­out pre­sent­ing your­self to be sniffed!” “HEY!!”)

    Some­times I open the door to let her feel like she’s get­ting to con­nect with all these offend­ing par­ties, but right now, I’ve got some really good Har­ney & Sons tea in the pot, and I’m just wait­ing for her to calm down. I’ve got my work to do, of course, but I’m glad to say that this early in the week, the work­load is light and so I don’t have to move very fast. And I’ve already taken Clemen­tine on a longer-than-usual walk, so I don’t have to worry that my mus­cles will com­pletely atro­phy if I fin­ish things up at a leisurely pace and then spend the evening read­ing and lis­ten­ing to pod­casts and eat­ing home­made chicken pot pie.

    What I’m say­ing is, whereas you want every dol­lar to have a name, I hap­pened on a period of time where the hours don’t have anyone’s name on them, and it’s just a lit­tle slice of heaven. Obvi­ously not the same thing as with money. I’ll make a note of that in my Dave Ram­sey hand­book … just as soon as I fin­ish this cup of tea and the dog stops barking.

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    Late update: My chicken pot pie exper­i­ment turned out really well, so I’m pass­ing it along in case any­one else wants to try. Looked up recipes online, but I couldn’t quite find what I wanted, which was some­thing that gave you the yummy bits of crust in the fill­ing with­out hav­ing to worry about putting the whole thing into a pie shell.

    So I made up a basic chicken stew sort of thing for the fill­ing — cooked up car­rots, cel­ery, onions, gar­lic in one pan and added chicken stock, salt and pep­per, some flour to thicken it up, cooked chicken and frozen peas and car­rots. At the same time the fill­ing was cook­ing, I opened up a Pills­bury refrig­er­ated pie shell out flat onto a cookie sheet, cooked it in a 450-degree oven for about 10 min­utes and let it cool.

    Served up a help­ing of the fill­ing into a bowl, crum­bled up some of the pie shell crust into it and went to town. Got all the good fill­ing refrig­er­ated and I stored the left­over crust, so I’m ready to go pot-pie-ing another day.


    Related posts:

    1. It’s like an inter­net of smell
    2. Chicken Basil Pizza
    3. Rainy Sat­ur­day in October
    4. And win­ter makes that sloooow right turn
    5. Pointil­list Clementine

    May 17th, 2010 | Grace | No Comments |

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