A Day of Firsts

Today has been an interesting day. It was my first day ever to work from home, and while it has certainly been wonderful, there are some aspects of it that I didn't anticipate. First, it's very, VERY quiet. I normally prefer that, and I always get more done in a quiet office, but there's something different about the quiet of the house. I literally don't see or hear another human being all day. By the day's end, it seems a bit unnerving. I think I'll need to start playing some music.

Also, I'm a bit light on work right now, and I'm finding that I can get work done much more quickly at home. Therefore I now have two more days before I go back to the office, but not much work to do. I must admit this has made me feel quite uneasy all day, like I'm going to get in trouble. Deep down I know that no one is really keeping track, and I also know that my boss is primarily interested in whether I get my work done, and not really in how much time I spend at it, but it still feels like slacking off. So here's the thing - I know I do good work, I know I'm reliable, and I have the sort of job where those qualities are more important than punching the clock. So I need to let go of the guilt and just roll with it, but it's weird and hard.

Enough work angst - on to the more interesting home front! Our hens have started laying. Not much, just one here and there, so we have our very first little batch of eggs. They're quite small - about half the size of a normal egg. They should get larger and much more abundant in the coming weeks. I'm a bit worried, actually. For two people who don't really eat that many eggs, a dozen laying hens, when you start to do the math, really sounds like A LOT of eggs. I intend to use and preserve a reasonable number of them for us, and hopefully find folks to buy our excess eggs, which would offset the cost of feed, making this little enterprise break even or maybe even make a small profit. Here are the first ones. Don't they look...eggy?



I decided since I'll be home during the day a lot more, I have time again to make bread by hand. After all, it typically only requires short spans of activity with long periods of no attention required in between. It seems like lately I can't log on or pick up a magazine without reading of the virtues of no-knead bread. It's gotten so many rave reviews that I decided to give it a shot. It takes quite awhile, and won't be done until sometime tomorrow, but I'm dying to know how it will turn out. I went with just a basic rustic wheat loaf, and started out with a smallish blob of dough in a large mixing bowl. Here's what it looks like after just a couple of hours:



Since I took this picture, the dough has risen nearly to the rim of the bowl. It's only been in the bowl for three hours, and is supposed to sit for 12 to 18 hours. Hmmm...

I also made an exciting discovery this morning while watering the plants. It seems that a previously unnoticed tomato plant has been squatting in the same pot with my bee balm. I have no idea how it got there or how long it's been there. I assume I never noticed it because it was dwarfed by the bee balm, but no longer! You can see it here on the left side of the bucket - it's quite tall.



I'll do my best to post a follow-up on the bread sometime tomorrow, like, uh, when it's done. So stay tuned for that!