How did I get here?

Normally I would have immediately sought out the owner of the dog to ask them to leash their pet or even issue them an animal-at-large citation–it’s illegal to allow your dog to roam untethered on public land, and it’s also just a terrible idea here, where it might get into conflict with other dogs or with wildlife. But I’m setting up for my program, so I’m a little busy, and I decide to wait until I’m done with that.

As time goes on I notice the dog isn’t just swimming around, it’s actually fetching things from the shore on the far side and depositing them on the beach nearby: abandoned tennis balls, plastic bottles, fast food cups, other miscellaneous trash. I’m bothered that he’s unleashed but I’m also inclined to let him do this public service just a little bit longer before I bring down the law.

Before I know it, guests are showing up for my campfire and I’ve got to sign them in. By the time we sit down on our camping chairs and start toasting marshmallows, I notice the dog is among my guests. Normally I would also tell the owners that not only does their dog need to be leashed, we also don’t allow pets at our programs. But right now I’m in the middle of telling the kids how to blow out a marshmallow that’s caught fire, and that’s taking up all my attention, so I forget about the dog for a minute. For a few minutes.

People are having a great evening and the end of the program sneaks up on me. Up to this point, the dog has floated casually around the campfire, graciously accepting ruined marshmallows and sand-covered Graham crackers. A little embarrassed I’ve let it go on this long, I finally ask the family the dog is currently mooching cocktail weenies from if they could please leash him.

“Oh, he’s not ours,” they answer.

I ask the group at large if the owners of this dog could get him on a leash. Nobody comes forward. I look for tags on the dog’s collar: there are none. This isn’t anybody’s dog. This is an opportunist. He is a free agent and he has been since before I showed up at 5pm to set up the campfire.

Obviously I can’t just leave him in the park. I’m the last employee there and it’s well after dark now. So I extinguish the fire and put the supplies in the lake shed and bag up the pile of trash the dog has collected and, resignedly, open the door to my car and tell this muddy, marshmallow-sticky, lake-water-smelling dog to get inside, which he cheerfully does. I send my housemates a text telling them, “bringing home a dog. sorry. can anybody buy dog food please”

I arrive home twenty minutes later to find my housemates have bought a leash, a new collar, and a large quantity of dog food. They walk him while I draw some bath water because I can tell he’s going to want to sleep in the bed and I am not letting him anywhere near my sheets until he’s clean. When my housemate returns from walking him, we feed him some dog food and I take off his collar to prepare him for a bath. The collar is faded and threadbare and looks older than the dog himself.

My housemate notices that, written on the inside, which is much drier and cleaner than the outside, there is writing in faded Sharpie: the word “PUCK,” followed by a phone number.

I call it, excited to do a good deed and reunite this dog with his owner, who must miss him terribly. Someone on the other end picks up the phone.

“Hi, I found your dog!” I say.

When the woman on the other end finally responds, she doesn’t sound relieved or thankful, she sounds confused. She says, “I’m not missing a dog.”

I’m worried I misread the number, but I venture, “Puck? I found him at [the park].”

“I’ll be right back,” says the woman, and sets down the phone. When she picks it back up a couple minutes later, she sounds almost irritated. “He must have jumped out a window. I’ll be right there.”

Ten minutes later we’re giving her a leash and a collar and kibble and she’s dragging Puck down our front walk while he wags his tail and grins back at us like this is a typical Friday night for him.

the following events ensued:

1. predictable lively discussion on the preparation of Wienerschnitzel, in which natives and wurstaboos are pro-puff and everybody else is like *confused dog head tilt* why wouldn’t you want the crust to stay ~attached to the thing you put it on? as with other fried foods?

2. thirty “Bad Schnitzel is my band name” jokes

3. thirty “Bad Schnitzel is my stripper name” jokes

4. one “ah yes, Bad Schnitzel! a lovely spa town” joke

5. this absolute masterpiece:

Then he says, “I mean, the problem isn’t the gender thing. The problem is four words: she, her, he, and him. We got rid of stewardess and turned it into flight attendant. It doesn’t matter if the flight attendant is a man or woman, so we got rid of it. We just need to get rid of those. I don’t need to know.”

“You don’t need to know… people’s gender?”

“No. I don’t care, I don’t need to know, and I don’t want to remember it.”

would you all be saying this if he they/them-ed a binary trans person instead of his “cishet siblings?” I certainly hope not because while you shouldn’t forcibly degender ANYONE, many trans people have more acute trauma around it

“they/them is a pronoun set without gender so it’s correct for everyone!!!” no. it’s not. I thought we all agreed that the point of letting people set their own pronouns was so we could respect them and make them feel seen and comfortable in their own skins, not prioritize what’s Most Convenient For Other People

As someone who would also not like to think about gender and struggles with being asked about pronouns because I do want asking to be the default instead of assuming, but also I don't identify with any pronouns and am fine with whatever people want to use, BUT ALSO I don't identify with my pronouns being any/all. I used to joke that my sexual orientation was 'whatever' and my gender was 'meh' and that ended up not really being a joke. But I don't want to tell people to use they/them for me because I don't identify with those as my pronouns as much as the ones I was assigned.

You are wildly underestimating my ability to go fucking feral about fresh produce. I don't think I even brought snap peas into the house last year. Just ate them right off the vine.

Though I did end up freezing the strawberries/blue berries as they ripened, but even those were consumed within the week.

Tomato (September) - you are a warm body that is nearby

Fresh new asparagus - romantic love

Artichoke - fondness

New rhubarb with leaves removed - flirtatious potential

Rhubarb with leaves left on - the bloom is gone

Swiss chard - I have made mistakes

Perpetual spinach - declaration of animosity between our houses

White-fleshed potato - you are a neighbor

Blue or red fleshed potato - as above, but with overtones of camaraderie/affection

Kale - you are a person who was nearby when I had kale

Raspberries - you are a person I admire

Strawberries - you are a treasure

Onion - I am confused

Young French beans or young peas - I thought of you especially

Runner beans - mild criticism; familial ties; gift from parent to child

Pumpkins - overt romantic, sexual or childhood-bestie interest; highest declaration of loyalty

Prettily coloured popping corn, I.e. glass gem - let this seal the breach between our houses

Zucchini/courgette - cry for help, resignation

@stealingyourbones has made some delightful food abominations, which taught me I can replace the water in bread with almost any liquid.

So I tried Miso.

The yeast loved it and frothed up super fast. Mixing miso broth with the egg and oil smelled funky. The dough didn’t rise any fluffier than usual but the texture feels good. Then I decided to roll in some black garlic and green onion. I’d add nori crumbled up but I ran out.

This is amazing. It tastes like if miso soup was solid. The flavor is immaculate. It’s just missing the nori flavor. I can add that next time because I am 100% making this again.

Yes! I love sharing recipes! @lady-jeleania

Here’s my Gma Vesta’s hamburger bun recipe:

1 Tbsp yeast

1/2 cup warm water (miso broth)

- mix together and let it froth up

1 1/2 cup warm water (miso broth)

1/2 cup sugar

1 1/2 tsp salt

1 egg

1/4 cup olive oil

- mix all together, then add frothy yeast

5 1/2 - 6ish cups flour

- mix in slowly with a fork until it’s hard to stir with the fork, then stir together with hands until it stops sticking to your skin when you rub your hands together.

- knead the dough about 10min until it starts pushing back (it gets springy)

Let the dough rest for 30min.

(I make a redneck proof box by microwaving a cup of water and quickly replacing the water with the dough bowl and shutting the door to give it a warm place to nap. Do not microwave the dough itself by reflex.)

Roll out the dough and add any flavors you like. For the miso soup bread I chopped up a couple black garlics, and a handful of green onion. Roll it up like cinnamon rolls, cut into 12, and roll each into a ball shape.

Stick in a greased 9x13 casserole dish and let the dough rise to double size. (About 40min-1hr depending on how warm your kitchen is.) (the redneck proof box won’t fit my casserole dish so I stick the rolls on top of the oven while it preheats with a dish towel over it.)

Preheat the oven to 350 and when the dough looks nice and squishy bake it for 20min.

You can brush butter on top if you want. That would look pretty and help a sprinkling of furikake stick after you pull it out of the oven. If you wanna up the miso taste you can also spread a very thin layer of miso paste in before you roll it up with the other fillings. I’m gonna try that next time.

Es hängen jetzt sogar Schilder dort:

Flexible feather armor