Lazy Day at the Ranch

It finally quit snowing and thankfully the Boston weathermen kept their perfect record of completely mispredicting the severity of the storm intact. What was to be 6 - 10 inches of heavy wet snow actually was 1-3 inches of wet snow. Not even worth shoveling. Now it is just gray, gloomy with a spit of drizzle and the occasional snow flurry. Cars going down the street are making that splashy, slushy sound of almost spring.

It is one of those perfect, stay in bed and read/sleep days. And since MBH has decided we will forgo our normal Saturday routine of Dammits, bookstore, and lunch, I have declared that today will be an official "Lazy Day at the Ranch". YIPPEE!! A whole day to catch up on a week worth of NYT crossword puzzles, make sourdough bread with my neglected mother starter, read a few cookbooks, finish one of the seven library books I am currently reading, take a nap or two, and if I really feel energetic, I may even make homemade mac and cheese for dinner.

MBH swears I have "ADD" during the weekend but what he doesn't understand is there is so much I want to do and so little time on the weekend to do it all. Normally by Thursday I have a mental list three pages long of all the things I want to get done on my two days of freedom. Some of them include those awful domestic chores like laundry and ironing, cleaning the bathroom, and during the winter the near constant mopping of the hardwood floors. But mostly the list includes things like: make the Cherry/Pecan Scone recipe in the "BBC Good Food" magazine from April, work on one of the three cross-stitch projects I have been working on for two years, try and finally finish Bill Bryson's 'Notes from a Small Island", and make Congressional Bean Soup with the hambone that is in the freezer from Christmas. All the while, I also want to drive up to Portsmouth, NH to window shop and have Bangers and Mash at Molly Malone's, or go to Kittery Point, ME and have winter lobster at my secret lobster shack or head further up the Maine coast to Freeport and LL Bean with a stop at the Cook's British Imports for four packages of Fox's Ginger Crunch biscuits, Heinz Baked Beans for my toast, and a Yorkie bar for MBH.

The nice thing about a day like today is the weather is too nasty to do the "go out and about" things on my mental list. I don't have all the ingredients to make the scones and while I could go to the store and pick them up, I don't feel like fighting the panicking "OH-NO-the-end-of-the-world-worst-snow-since-the-Blizzard of '78-better- pick up-that-last-loaf-of-bread-and-4 gallons-of-milk" crowd. Oh darn!! Forced to read, bake sourdough, watch really bad 80's movies on TV and nap. Now where are my bunny slippers...