17/09/2016

Clambering up the Cold Mountain path,

The Cold Mountain trail goes on and on:

The long gorge choked with scree and boulders,

The wide creek, the mist-blurred grass.

The moss is slippery, though there’s been no rain

The pine sings, but there’s no wind.

Who can leap the world’s ties

And sit with me among the white clouds?

-Han Shan

I'd had pizza dough rising in the oven since about 1pm, inspired by the passion of a man called Gennaro.

'What is it about making pizza? It's fantastico!'

and every time I opened the oven to check on it I inhaled its sweet yeasty smell. Anticipation.

Christy arrived at about 5pm with mushrooms, peppers and some ripe bananas, and we begun making pizza. Christy was so much better than me at rolling out the pizza dough, having taken a pizza making class in kindergarten. My prior experience with making my own pizza has been microwaving frozen Dr. Oetker's pizza, or spreading Prego sauce and cheese on toast.

4 pizzas were almost completed, and ready to go into the oven, but we had to wait because Emily had the onions, and was on her way. Anticipation.

We had to peel the pizza off the baking paper, because it had got stuck, burning our fingers in the process - Anticipation.

But it was worth it and delicious and we all stood on our chairs to take a picture of the spread - four pizzas, three girls, 500 grams of flour. We ate most of it, leaving the pieces with the most paper stuck in the bottom.

We watched Little Miss Sunshine (which is the sort of movie you watch when you don't want to feel too much, but still want to watch something thought-provoking) and then adjourned for ice cream sandwiches.

I begun making banana-coconut ice cream to have sandwiched between our cookies.

And then I broke the blender, and caused a power trip in the house - bathos.

But there was enough ice cream for the three of us to have and it was delicious, although I was very worried about the blender.

Christy had to leave then, and Emily and I needed to sleep early to wake up the next day for the Macritchie treetop walk. But there are not many people I would be able to talk to for 4 hours about the messy, gore-y bits of you and gore-y bits of me, and when that happens you don't fall asleep. Not until 4.30am, when in about 5 minutes a storm wakes you up again, the crashing-sheets-of-rain-howling-winds storm that I love most of all.

“I have learned that to be with those I like is enough” 
― Walt Whitman

And I like you two, very very much.