My surgery has been postponed indefinitely because there isn’t currently any donor tissue to use to reconstruct my ACL. In a weird twist to my attempts to “buy local,” I seem to be subject to an inaccessibility of allograft material, which is a localized issue. Apparently if we were still living in DC I would have had the surgery by now.
But not having the surgery just yet provides some unexpected benefits, like I’ve trimmed our Christmas tree, we can go ahead with a cookie exchange party, which will help us meet some new people, and I got to go to the annual holiday farmer’s market (the regular weekly market closed at the end of October and won’t reopen until April).
Still, it’s strange to think that I’m waiting, basically, for someone to pass away not so I can have their heart, but so I can go bowling again. It’s strangely offensive, or trite, or . . . something distasteful. That said, it is the best surgical option for me. And as I myself am an organ donor, I suppose I may pass something on, too. I just don’t have a response for people who try to make jokes about all of this (except maybe for the “buy local” one). Organ donation just isn’t funny. I mean, it’s kind of ridiculously unfunny.
So in the meantime, I bake. Baking, as we all know, sure can be funny. For Thanksgiving, I produced an apple pie, about two and a half dozen sweet potato biscuits, and a pumpkin swirl cheesecake. Thanks to my Mom, James Turner, and Junior’s bakery in Brooklyn, respectively, for the recipes.
Pumpkin swirl cheesecake
The cheesecake, it should be noted, was not made without some trauma to me and the people in the room whilst it was being prepared. I was making the cake with my almost 12-year-old niece, Beth, when I was showing her my trick for cracking eggs. She asked, rightly so, if I wanted her to break the egg into the bowl or into something else, then putting that into the bowl. Because my egg-cracking tip minimizes the chance that broken shell will get into the recipe, I said it was fine to break it into the bowl.
Bad idea, Everett. Bad, bad idea. For while my 38 years of experience with store-bought eggs has so far produced wonderful incredible edibleness, this was about to go off the rails for me. She cracked and cracked the egg, and said, “it won’t open.” I took the egg from her, and in the nanosecond before I released the yolk, I saw the problem.
Humans, however, need something more than a nanosecond for their reflexes to kick in. I could only manage a slow-motion, “noooooooooo,” as I dropped it into $8 worth of cream cheese, vanilla, and whipping cream.
It was blood red. Worse, it had a half-inch large dead baby chick in it. And the redness of it against the pure white cream cheese mix made it only look more incredibly disgusting.
Suddenly there were people all crowding around the bowl trying to get a glimpse of the grotesque concoction. Kind of like when someone tastes something spoiled and screams and then begs you to taste it, too. Or like eating lunch in the Social Security Administration cafeteria. Kind of like that.
Susanne’s older brother, true to older brother form, suggested we just dump out the egg and continue on with the cake making. We did not of course, listen to him. This was made easier because of precedent–we are in the habit of not listening to his crazy man ideas. Instead I took a drive 12 miles to the grocery store and got more cream cheese, which was conveniently on sale. Then I wondered if the grocery store had some conspiracy to screw up people’s cheesecakes with fertilized chicken eggs so we would have to double our purchases of the cream cheese. Now that the Republicans are out of the White House, what will we do for conspiracy theories? Egg producers may take a lot of heat.
This brings me to the mind-losing portion of this post. I was planning on the knee surgery on December 3, but lo and behold, as it is postponed indefinitely, I now have no calendar for anything — not rehab, not getting a job, not bowling — and so my sanity has begun to trickle away. Dear readers, hopefully it will not adversely affect this poor little blog too badly.
In the meantime, I snapped this apple pie picture shortly before the pie was no more. Enjoy.
Almost gone apple pie
Next up: Santa comes to Walla Walla.
Trans/plant/portation 
And THAT is EXACTLY why we don’t own a rooster. Well, that and the ability of roosters to blind toddlers with one swift kick anyway. Bleargh.
Speaking of chickens, It got down to 13 degrees and windy last night. I was out there in the afternoon constructing a makeshift windbreak so they could go out into the run and then cooked them up a batch of warm oatmeal with applesauce. Then as the sun was going down, Alex and I were out there in the wind fighting with ladders and extension cords to get electric run out to the coop so they could have a heat lamp last night.
We have the best eggs ever.
re: egg – ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
re: organ donation. it is a weird idea, that. but i have kind of a neat story about it. my uncle, who passed away from lung cancer i guess it was about 2 years ago, he was blind. he’d contracted toxoplasmosis (i think) which had taken his eyesight probably 30 years ago.
he was an organ donor. since the cancer had spread, most of his organs were unsuitable for donation. but he was able to donate both of his corneas, and so he helped other people to see. i think that is pretty awesome.
Alexis — you know, they make these portable outdoor heaters that cost about $100 and don’t need a cord because they run on small propane canisters. We got one for our wedding (I went a little crazy with the Target registry, okay?), and they work great. I think Susanne’s cousins in Michigan use one, too, for their chickens.
Tony — such a nice story. I love to hear “happy” donation stories because I think too few families allow their relatives to actually donate their organs at death. Sorry about his passing. I had an uncle who died of lung cancer, too. It’s not a nice death. But at least it was quick, I suppose…
Alex doesn’t know this yet, but he is running an underground electric cable out there next summer 😉
Nice, Alexis. I suppose he doesn’t read this blog, or you’d have some e’splainin’ to do…