A Meditation on Pizza Dough

I don't have a picture of me making pizza dough - good thing as it would be horrendous. Maybe I'll add one later when this attempt at pizza is done. It's been a long time since I've made pizza - and this current attempt is reminding me of the first time I made a pie crust and it came out shaped like the state of Alaska. The upside of this is that now I make a really killer pie crust.
In the meantime, I am finding this attempt at pizza a little meditative. I am not a good meditator kind of person. Generally, I fall asleep. I love savasana at the end of a yoga class (which I think is supposed to be meditative) but generally I doze during it. I do suspect that what other people do when mediating is what I do in the bathtub when I get in and the water is just the right kind of hot and I can let my body relax and I can just be - I don't have to think about anything. Consequently, the bathtub is where I have some really good ideas.
This pizza attempt is meditative in a different way. It is not like the bathtub in that making pizza dough is what I want to do at the end of a long day. But it is the opportunity to notice my mind and the kinds of things I do. Pizza dough - it turns out - is like a lot of things that end up serving as a kind a mirror in life.
I started to get my dough close to the size it needed to be for my pan and then it went all wonky. I folded it all up and let it rest - like the cookbook said. During the dough's rest (Dough, like babies and the best of us, need naps and/or time outs) I reread the cookbook's instructions. It said not to worry about tears in the dough or about getting the dough perfect - because it could all be fixed and patched up once it got squeezed into the pan. I realized I was doing with my dough what I tend to do in my life: focus on getting it perfect - or so perfect - that I end up sabotaging my efforts. I of course didn't realize I was doing this at the time. Mostly I was thinking about my sister-in-law who I now think is perfect because she routinely makes a variety of pizza doughs with various kinds of flour depending on the various gluten intolerances in the family. And she does it with a baby crawling circles around her feet.
But this is something else I do - compare myself to people who I think are perfect and use it as a hammer in the litany of all the ways I fall up short. I am the A student in life who writes C papers - or the person who doesn't end up doing things because I think my first attempt should be awesome and I end up intimidating myself.
Who knew this all was inside a ball of dough. Now all I have left to do is get into action - on a novel, a collage book, blog postings, picture taking etc etc etc. And hope that I don't use overwhelm as the new scapegoat for getting me off the hook for things.

The field trips in my house

So here we are - taking it easy with a sprained ankle. Spending time on the bed and on the floor with my little one - and the dogs as said territories are also dog zones. It turns out the baby likes his face being licked by the dogs. I don't really.
I have been a very good patient by resting and reading and playing with baby. I have been deliberately been taking it slow so my ankle could heal. I haven't left the house - mostly because our front steps leading up to the house can be treacherous - in fact until today I've stayed mostly in the back of the house and not even wandering up to the front or the kitchen. But today, I started to get a little nutty and had to wander around and play with the camera. So this is my token shot from today's field trip (and with a sprained ankle this would qualify as a field trip).
In some ways, it is like a vacation oddly. I've been reading the kinds of books one reads on vacation: Jane Smiley and Ann Patchett. A Thousand Acres came out in 1991. I'm a little embarrassed I just got around to reading it. As always, my default excuse is it's American and I prefer the Brits. Truth be told, I'm not usually one for location landscape novels, yet this one, as it follows the King Lear storyline, is far more enticing and exquisite. It's a novel I have to reread to see how Smiley did it. Rereading novels to see how they are constructed is something I tend to do when I work on/struggle with my own novel. Often, exquisite novels make me want to shoot myself as I feel like I could never achieve anything that rendered the human experience so beautifully, but Smiley's made me want to go back to mine. Somehow, she showed me it was possible. Maybe it's that even as she tackles a Shakespearean plotline, she does so so simpley. Like you read that novel and you just watch her putting one foot in front of the other.
I love Ann Patchett, but The Magician's Assistant is more of a cruise ship read. It's one of those books that I can shrug my shoulders and say it's okay when really what I'm thinking is there's nothing bad I can really say about it because Ann Patchett would just thumb her nose at me and say "neener neener neener, I'm published and you're not. so there."
Blasted.
Nevertheless, with this ankle situation, I'm thinking of going back to my novel, writing more in my journal, collaging. Of doing things besides loving and playing with my baby. Keep your fingers crossed I just don't end up with more unfinished projects.

Favorites

My husband and I got a new camera so I've been taking pictures of my favorite nooks, crannies, and things around my house. This is me learning about photo taking.

First, we have my window sill with bottles of clippings and stem of ranunculas. Ranunculas are some of my favorite flowers (this week I was craving red - a common craving I suffer from so I got red ones from the market).
Then we have my print tray that I fill with des objets curieux (the bird my sis gave me for my birthday, the stop watch and magnifying glass are my inheritance from my grandfather).

For this week's dash of yellow (in lieu of lemons) I am basking in two grapefruits from my friend Jenny's tree in Santa Barbara. I hate to eat them because I love how pretty they are on my dining room table.

Ah, the gift of Meyer lemons!

The lemons from my dad's lemon tree. Sadly, (but luckily for us) my dad is allergic to lemons. Consequently, my husband and I were sent home with a bag full of Meyer lemons. The possibilities for desserts are endless - my husband makes an awesome lemon ice cream or I was thinking about lemon squares or lemon tarts. I also found a lemon cake recipe in Martha Stewart - the filling is lemon curd while the frosting is whipped cream. Yum.
Yet, I came up against two issues: one is that I find them beautiful and after putting them in a bowl, I have grown used to looking at them as the centerpiece on my dining room table. The second is I gave up sugar for Lent. Probably, I will end up making a huge batch of lemon curd and sticking it in the freezer so I can make a lovely lemon cake for Easter. In the meantime, I think I might indulge in a german pancake sans sucre but doused in butter and lemon.