weekend, incomplete and inchronological

With the advent of November has come a sharp decrease in the temperature.  The walk to work this morning was blustery and cold, wind slipping through the open zipper of my black leather jacket, fingers tingling when I had to remove my hand from my pocket to replace the slipped strap of my purse on my shoulder.

(again and again and again, it slipped, and the stiffness of the coat makes the replacement more of a chore than anticipated)

October went out with a bang, small possies of small costumed children looking down at the bowl of candy with the requisite "trick or treat", Kate in a Luigi hat and Ben in his inflatable man-riding-dinosaur costume, slippers and microwaved apple cider with cinnamon, macaroni and cheese in the oven with browned and bubbling provolone.

My phone stopped responding to my finger, and the slow horror of realization chilled the warm food in my stomach: an iPhone that doesn't recognize touch is nothing more than a pretty watch, a glorified news-ticker.

I didn't trade it in for the $9 when I went to the AT&T store just outside of the Central T stop, figured maybe I could pull some pictures off of it, maybe I could pull the treasure trove of videos of Laura (and sometimes Jon) dancing, Jon goofing around last Christmas break when we all sat by the piano (DJ at the keys) or singing 16 Tons.

I'm still becoming acquainted with my new phone, bells and whistles and fingerprint recognition.  I input my thumbprints but rarely remember to use them to unlock the phone, the rote memorization of my passcode burned into my hand.  The old phone sits listlessly by my bed, coming to life at 8:00am on weekdays to sing my alarm tone.

It is an alarm tone that I cannot dismiss, not even by force restarting the phone (the only trick left to me with the neutered screen), so I suppose that I am lucky to have picked a relatively inoffensive tone, not a song or dogs barking or alarms blaring.  I also suppose that I will have to wait until the battery finally gives out, which could be weeks from now, to dismiss the alarm forever.

I had to go to work on Saturday in addition to the AT&T store for my emergency phone replacement, so our original lunch plans of grilled cheese on homemade bread and homemade tomato soup were slightly thrown off-kilter.  I made a loaf of inoffensive white bread, halved the recipe but forgot about that when I added the yeast and the sugar, decided to run with it (how bad could it be).

The dough rose, I punched it down, stretched it out into a rectangle and rolled it into a tiny loaf, dwarfed by the loaf pan that I laid it in.  Then I covered it with plastic wrap, slid it into the fridge, and wrote out directions for Kate to bake it the following morning.

She baked it while I was out, and she and Ben assembled the tomato soup - the Pioneer Woman recipe, with sherry and heavy cream, and petite diced tomatoes and a diced onion.  I came home with an umbrella in one hand and the bag containing various phone accessories from AT&T in the other (the poor girl at the desk did the best she could for us, and she did pretty well, considering, and then she suggested a case for the phone that was cheap and included a screen protector and she meticulously applied the protector for me).

We talked about the phone for a few minutes, and then Kate said "oh, I underbaked the bread, and then I didn't know if we could put it back in, so..."

I'm still not certain that the bread was underbaked.  It may have been the extra yeast and yeast food.  All I know is that we had a moist loaf of bread that, when sliced semi-thickly and toasted up in butter, agonizingly slowly, in a nonstick frying pan with a couple of slices of velveeta (only the best for our grilled cheese days), it was the most delicious grilled cheese I have ever eaten.

But scarf weather, man.  She is upon us.

PS I know inchronological is not a word but I'm being snappy, not rigorously correct.