Note # 64 – The Glamorous Writing Life

So. I finished the manuscript for The Spaghetti Supper Sangha around 11:30 this morning — more about that later — and I felt that after 109,000 words (and all this time) this event merited a little celebration. (Little is the key word here — I was home with the dogs on a day of pouring, cold rain and was still in my pyjamas because that is a thing you can do when you’re a writer — work in your pyjamas. I recommend it highly.)

‘You know what would be nice on this cold, wet day?’ I thought. ‘A bowl of hot soup and noodles’ and so I closed up my computer, and the dogs and I set off for the kitchen to rustle up some ramen.

Now, given that I am allergic to an astonishing number of foods (including, I’m rather sad to report anything with gluten) I cook almost everything that we eat. Take out is fraught with danger for those of us with celiac and fish allergies, and ramen has been a particularly tricky dish to reproduce at home, largely because of the noodle situation. Recently though, I got my allergy-ridden hands on some brown rice and millet ramen (trust me, it tastes better than it sounds) and so noodles were back on the menu.

I boiled some water for the noodles, heated up some oil to sauté the aromatics and got the broth warming. The dogs helped by standing exactly wherever I needed to be at any given moment but despite them I was able to gather my tamari sauce and rice vinegar and chilli paste — all the stuff that was going to make this bowl of noodles so delicious – and I was almost through chopping up my veggies when disaster struck in the form of a carrot that rolled at an inopportune moment.

Now, my knife skills are, if not legendary, then extremely well-known and admired by my friends and family. I am a champion chopper, I can whip out a mise en place like a pro and so I find the odd occasion when I cut myself to be utterly infuriating. Also, when I do cut myself, I very nearly remove a part of the digit that was involved. Go big or go home, I guess.

Anyway, there was a blade vs finger incident and then there was a bit of cursing and more than a bit of blood and as I hightailed it to the first aid supplies in the bathroom (with both dogs right behind me) I remembered a lesson my veterinarian assistant partner had taught me — ALWAYS RINSE WITH THE ISOPROPYL ALCOHOL FIRST, THEN THE WATER! (Try this next time you cut yourself, you’ll thank me.)

I tended to my wound for a while and decided that it *probably* didn’t need stitches but it would not stop bleeding and none of this was getting my celebratory lunch made. So now there’s nothing to do but wrap it all up in paper towels and hobble through the rest of the chopping (very slowly,) the broth making (careful measuring,) and the final combining of all the ingredients into a lush broth with toothy noodles.

Several paper towels later, I’ve got everything simmering, the aroma is making the dogs dance around the kitchen and I’ve been able to clamp a couple of bandaids down on the wounded finger tightly enough to suppress the bleeding — and it as that moment that I see the whole picture: the delighted dogs, the steaming bowl of noodles, the mess I’ve made in the kitchen and me in my Christmas-themed flannel pyjamas and I think, yeah, this writing life is pretty glamourous.

Wouldn’t change a thing.

Well, except for the bleeding.

P.

P.S. I’m teaching writing courses over at Pencil & Prose and you can get 25% off your first course with the code BLANKETFORT25

P.P.S. Full disclosure, that is not the ramen I made in the photo above. I ate mine so fast, I forgot to take a photo.