My oven is broken.
I don’t know what happened to it and I don’t know how to fix it.
The timer still works, as does the little dial that allows you to change the oven setting and also the temperature, but the oven itself? The heating element and the fan at the back?
Zilch. Nothing. Nada. Dead.
Which made my original plan for today’s post just a little bit more difficult than I imagined it would be.
“Get over here you silly little goose.”
It was a mere three hours after meeting Koji and already I’d been given my first nickname.
I wasn’t sure about it at first – geese are such odd creatures, you see, all long necks and beady, curious eyes and flapping wings – but it’s managed to stick, and every startled honk and sideward glance out of me continues to perpetuate the moniker.
It was the berries that made me do it.
$5.00 per three punnets. Queensland grown. Large as a small plum and yet, somehow, amazingly sweet and juicy and strawberry-like.
I ate most of a punnet whilst waiting for dinner to cook, and another half punnet after dinner was done.
Koji, who had partaken of his own pre-dinner sweet treats, only needed a couple to sate his hunger for dessert and insisted (to my chargrain) on dousing them in maple syrup before eating them.
The skies were so promising on Saturday morning.
They shone. Glistened, even, as the light filtered through my half-heartedly drawn curtains and past the fingers that attempted to shield my too-sore eyes.
I rolled over and buried my head under the largest pillow I could locate with my still-shut eyes.
A voice from the doorway.
“Cherlie?”
They say it’s impossible to fake a smile.
Sure, your lips might point skyward and your cheeks may ache from the effort, but anyone looking carefully will most certainly detect something missing. A glint in the eyes. An involuntary crinkle of the nose. The subtle signs of contentedness. Humor. Joy.
