Spring Cleaning

Good Morning everyone. It's 7:04 a.m. as I type this and I have been up about an hour. This means I slept in more than 3 hours past my normal wake up time over these last 6 months. This. Is. A. Good. Thing.

Yesterday was my last day at the donut shop. *Insert huge heaving sigh of relief right here* My coworkers sent me off with such a funny and spirited last day.... I love you guys! Ryan, Rachel and Miles in particular and Abraham too.... it was seriously memorable. A few of our loyal customers stopped in to say adios as well which was sweet. I had made a special for the weekend that went over gangbusters which was a bananas foster cream filled donut. People were feeling it. It was a "deep thoughts" provoking sort of item. Reach deep within your soul.... behold the final donut special..... this donut loves you.

I also did a fresh strawberry version with the berries tossed in rose water, vanilla and apricot preserves. My friend Jeff told me while eating one that it was so good it was weird. This is the sort of compliment I hold dear. The weirder the better.... as long as it's good weird. 

Abraham is a guy who works the overnight shift from midnight til 8 doing the raised yeast dough. He does not speak English and I do not speak Spanish. Somehow over these past months we developed a comfort level with one another in our inability to communicate in a normal every day fashion. We had a translation book that was utterly worthless that we would refer to at least a few times a night only to find the words we were searching for didn't exist in the book. So then it was our own goofy version of sign language and a sort of guessing game with a lot of head shaking and laughing involved. At least 30% of the time the moment would end in a big shoulder shrug and just plain giving up on what one or the other of us was trying to tell the other one. I had asked Abraham a while back to write down his recipe for making Mexican mole sauce for me. The confused conversation that ensued went on for over a month. The mole recipe was elusive and I had sort of given up on the thing. Yesterday Abraham showed up with grocery bags full of stuff, tied on his apron and proceeded to show me how to make the mole in person. He whipped up a complete meal. I now understand why he did not write it down because there are quite a lot of steps and weird little nuances that would have been really hard to describe. It was delicious and he is so sweet for having done this. The dude is a good egg and it's proof that friendship does not require speaking the same language. 

We brought home enough mole sauce to last us for the next 3 months. It is going to have to go in to the freezer there is so much. Awesome. 

I cannot say that I will miss making donuts. It was too specific. Too fried. I am glad I had the experience but I am most certainly done with it. It feels good to shed my donut hat and know that I am moving on to whatever comes next. Today that mostly means laundry and organizing our little apartment which has been in steady decline due to my weird schedule and constant zombie like state of being. We are meeting with the other artists here at El Zaguan this week to plan the coming season and schedule our show dates. Billy and I have a road trip in the Airstream planned for April. I am super excited to get to work on my photography and plan my work for shows here this summer. It already feels like we are off on a good path for a creative and satisfying season. 

Last Monday we hiked the Atalaya trail which is near our house leading up into the foothills of the Sangres. It was still pretty snowy and icy up there but we made it up and the view is always so cool from the top of that little mountain. 

The weather is just now starting to shape up here. We will be in the low 60's for a good part of this week. This is bad news for my allergies but so welcome in every other way. We also start our third session of boot camp today. We just came from a week off and are anxious to get rolling again. Let the pain and suffering begin! Now... off to sort through the piles of mail, magazines, books and general mess that has been silently waiting for me all these weeks. Spring cleaning I suppose.