Know to knead

Wednesday the kids came home while I was still finishing up my lunch time. They have early release at 1:10, and I had a meeting that pushed my lunch back by half an hour.

Nicole stayed home today, but she provided transportation to school for Colin, Eric, and Rachel, and also took the two boys to piano after school and brought home Rachel. Lydia got herself to school and did piano at home.

Nicole also had an appointment to get her stitches removed. She told me the hospital required her to wear a surgical mask on top of her KN95. She was surprised (and dismayed?) that all the staff were only wearing surgical masks. I don't remember if I mentioned a couple weeks ago that she had had a sebaceous cyst (apparently also called a wen) removed from her upper arm during an unrelated dermatologist visit. The stiff stitches protruding from her skin reminded me of The Fly.

There were several excellent candidates for word of the day today, but then a truly exceptional one appeared: pétrir, in "mais tu sais de quelle farine nous pétrissons la galette des traîtres ?" It means to knead, and now it has me wondering how much more fairly basic vocabulary I'm missing for things that are important to me and I see or do regularly. Probably the only way to find out is to narrate my days. Wait, I'm already doing that, at least at the summary level. Maybe I should be writing these diaries in French.

Rachel suggested I do the Spanish Wordle today. I didn't know there was such a thing. I also found one in French. I learned the other day about a four character Chinese phrase Wordle clone, in pinyin, but that's too sophisticated for my current level.

I helped Colin with his math homework after work. He's doing a geometry unit now, and had to pick shapes to add together to form angles of given sizes. I didn't have to provide much help, he just wasn't sure how to get started.

I decided at lunchtime to bake another loaf of bread. I forgot the pétrissage due to being back at work in the afternoon, but when I finally got to it hours later, it rose quite well. I've been making whole wheat bread after a long time mostly using the high hydration local bread flour. This time I accidentally added a little too much water, so I threw in some flax seeds with the chia. I baked it this evening. I think it's likely I normally let my dough rise for longer than it needs, because this proofed and baked great after the shorter rise.

Now I've gone and used the word of the day from Balzac in the remainder of my post. That's what I get for not waiting until the end to introduce it. I don't know if I can make that a regular feature.