Woke up to subzero temps this morning, grateful that there is nothing…NOTHING…that requires me to go outside the house today. Yesterday, I returned overdue library books (a gothic horror novel by Elizabeth Hand, and a thick collection of Pablo Neruda poems), picked up a few grocery necessities, and got that teaspoon-sized dose of human interaction that’ll do me for about a week. Cuz Introvert.
The JusJoJan that I wrote yesterday was timely, a poem that came in front of a weekend that could be seen as a hardship, but that I’m choosing to see as an opportunity.
An opportunity to turn on the electric baseboard heaters in the Family Room and sit in front of a sunny picture window to write this SoCS in the comfort of a soft-padded Danish rocking chair under a thick gray blanket. To keep an eye on my sourdough pizza dough, sitting in a blue pyrex bowl in the sun, to check time and readiness to punch it down and help it rise (life lesson there?). There’ll be a small round of chewy, tangy bread tonight, topped with red sauce, sumptuous yellow onions, pump kalamata olives, sweet red peppers, crispy pepperoni, and gooey mozzarella. And a green salad because that was one of the grocery essentials.
I’m hungry now.
I also took the quite necessary opportunity to feed my sourdough starter because there may be a Challah-Pullah bread with cardamom and golden raisins in my near future, leading to yet another opportunity, to share the bounty with my young neighbors. And maybe pass along some of my summer strawberry-brandy presrves to them, too. Sorry my children, but they’re physically closer!
There’s an opportunity for laundry and movie watching on one of the free streaming services, and maybe a hot apple cider and brandy with a stick of cinnamon, but that’s after sunset, after pizza.
On crawling under a stack of flannel, quilt, and wool blankets, the kitty joining me sometime in the night after the deer have passed by the window (he’s a watcher, that boy), I’ll put the first day of this long cold snap behind me, and wake up to see tomorrow as another day of opportunities.
Hey, does this count as a prose poem?
© Liz Husebye Hartmann (2025)
January 4 – SoCS: Your prompt for #JusJoJan the 4th and Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “in front/behind.” Use “in front,” use “behind,” or use them both in your post for bonus points! Enjoy!
Valley of the Trolls 
How cozy! One of my goals for this year is to learn how to make gluten-free sour dough bread. I got some gluten-free starter recently and am looking forward to using it.
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Oh! Looking forward to reading a post on how it works out & secrets to success!
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One of my great childhood joys was sneaking a pinch of fresh rising dough out of the bowl that mom set out on a radiator. Now I learn that floor has a greater chance of carrying salmonella than raw eggs.
Knowledge ruins everything.
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I know, right? Remembering scooping raw cookie dough and running from the kitchen & Mom’s frustrated yells. Hey, I survived, so it must be ok, right? 🙄
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