Cal­gon, dou­ble time!

At least you’re see­ing this skunk in day­light hours! But I’m get­ting ahead of myself. Let me describe to you my day. Oy veh.

Actu­al­ly it start­ed last night, when Avery dis­cov­ered (near­ly spit­ting it across the table) that her glass of milk was ROT­TEN. This, of course, was the same half gal­lon that I had used to make my after­noon-project batch of vichys­soise. How dare they! Fizzy, awful.

Then this morn­ing. I’m sor­ry, some­one tell me I did­n’t get up at the crack of dawn (well, it was 8) in a pour­ing rain­storm to dri­ve an hour and half for a horse­back rid­ing les­son that had been CAN­CELLED. Tru­ly. The only thing that saved me from an absolute tem­per fit was actu­al­ly two things: one, the train­er had an out of date phone num­ber for me, and two, we were, in any case, ren­dez-vous­ing with Annabelle to bring her to the long-await­ed sleep­over. So. I kissed Alyssa, watched Elliot slog through pud­dles at the barn, and hus­tled the girls straight BACK into the car for anoth­er hour and a half dri­ve back home. It was enlivened by expos­ing the girls to “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er” on the CD play­er, which made me feel very old, half the Bea­t­les being dead and anoth­er sim­ply embar­rass­ing. How­ev­er. Dur­ing the dri­ve Avery found out from her Iowa Non­na on the cell­phone that a pack­age await­ed her at Red Gate Farm, from the sin­gu­lar­ly excit­ing return address of “Amer­i­can Girl,” which made arrival very excit­ing: a new doll! Hol­ly, to replace the Hol­ly stolen cal­lous­ly from our park­ing lot in Tribeca. There you go: a unique “New York isn’t per­fect” memory.

To lunch at the din­er, then a marathon ses­sion at the pool! Much div­ing, lap swim­ming, while the skies grad­u­al­ly cleared to the MOST beau­ti­ful ear­ly evening swim ever. Sim­ply divine, com­ing up from a dive to see blue, blue sky and green, green trees. Avery’s valiant­ly attempt­ing diving.

Home for me to fran­ti­cal­ly clear up all the mess from an ear­ly morn­ing depar­ture and pre­pare spaghet­ti all car­bonara, tons of gar­lic. Annabelle is my best din­ner­time cus­tomer. Here’s the recipe:

Kris­ten’s Carbonara
(serves four)

1 pound bacon, through­ly chilled and sliced into 1‑inch pieces (easy to do: just keep the pound togeth­er as it’s pack­aged and slice down the strips length­wise as a bulk, does that make sense?)
4 cloves gar­lic, fine­ly minced
1/2 small white onion, fine­ly minced
1/2 pint light cream
1 egg yolk
3/4 pound cappellini
2 tsps fresh thyme, leaves only
1/2 grat­ed pecori­no romano or parmesan

Boil water for pas­ta. Then in a large skil­let, saute bacon bits over low to medi­um heat, stir­ring near­ly con­stant­ly and tak­ing care that the bacon does not scorch. Drain fre­quent­ly (not down the drain! try a mea­sur­ing cup, then you can keep it to saute hash browns in if you’re feel­ing ambitious).

When bacon is com­plete­ly crispy but not burned, drain one last time and return skil­let to heat. Add gar­lic and onion to the sauteed bacon and saute light­ly, again tak­ing care not to scorch. When gar­lic and onion are soft­ened, add cream and bring to a low sim­mer. Add egg yolk and stir thor­ough­ly. The sauce can sit and sim­mer while you cook and drain the pasta.

Cook pas­ta and drain. Throw the pas­ta into the sauce skil­let and toss well with the sauce. Serve with thyme and cheese sprin­kled on top.

The girls made home­made “cook­ie dough ice cream” with real cook­ie dough! Then the real heart-clencher of the day: I went to (nice Indi­ana-ism there) take the garbage (only we’d say “trash” back home) to the can in the barn, when out of the bag I’d stashed on the ter­race bounced… a SKUNK! EEEWWW!! Cute, all right, but alive! In my garbage bag! It lurked with­out undue alarm on the ter­race as I stared, and screamed, and the girls came run­ning down from Avery’s bed­room, con­vinced I was near­ly dead from… some­thing. Final­ly it ambled off. Terror!

Much sweet­er is the mel­on-obsessed wood­chuck, Gary II, so named after Jill and Joel’s orig­i­nal Gary. That boy loves mel­on! Car­ried away a whole half, if that makes sense.

OK, I’m fad­ing. Sleep­over final­ly liv­ing up to its name as both girls slum­ber away. Sleep well!