And I did not lose a single pound

You'll want to keep your distance when you see this.

I was meaning to post a lot sooner, but became busy with work and then got sick. I still don't feel like talking about food, so I'm going to save recent cooking experiences for a subsequent post when I can do them justice.

However, I will happily talk about ovens.

Last weekend, Owen and I chose our oven site. It is the correct distance from the fence as dictated by the county. We put down cement pavers to create a level surface.

You have no idea how hard this was.

It looks like it would be about as complex as setting the table, but took us almost an entire day. Getting cement pavers to sit level on a sloping piece of rocky ground when you have no upper body strength or geometry skillz? Humbling. We ended up using a carpenter's level, which I'd never done before. I assure you, those mothers are now level.

After we were through for the day, Owen and I ended up watching Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ. No comment. I bring it up only because I was preoccupied throughout by all the perfectly flat stone surfaces in the ancient world. Humans are so smart.

2. The next day, we mixed mortar, inhaled mortar powder, and started laying the brick platform for the oven.

That is not the vessel in which you want to mix mortar.

What a mess. What a learning curve

A few times I got my hands coated in mortar. If I rub them together five days later it still feels like they underwent some expensive and brutal dermabrasion. We worked hard for a few hours and I ruined my favorite pair of jeans and then it was time to drive Owen to sleep-away camp.

where we left it

Not exactly tearing through this project, are we? It looks good from a distance, very bad close up. But I have kicked it as hard as I could and the structure is solid, so that's what really matters.

We will resume on Saturday, after Owen returns. Isabel comes home on Monday. We have missed her. I'm ready for us all to be under one roof again.

Look what the chickens have done to our rhubarb.

Supposedly poisonous, but I see no signs of illness among the hens.

 I am trying to decide whether to construct more barriers, or clip wings.

In case you missed it, I wrote a review of ice cream books for Slate that you can read here.