Flightless Birds and Alisania

To continue my report about our Palm Sunday, Mama, in one of her rare baking sessions, made the birds out of yeast dough ("Palmmöskes") a few hours ago. I had just coincidentally discovered that the word "lady" comes from the Middle English for "loaf" and "knead." So, I was indignantly thinking, all that women are apparently here for is to knead bread. )c:< Anyway, Mama's specific dough had risen beautifully and looked like a sponge with all the air bubbles; it enlightened me as to the reason why nineteenth-century women talked about "setting the sponge" for bread. She briefly kneaded it, then cut it into equal pieces. Each of these she formed into the rough shape of a bird, with a beaked head, a tail, feet, and a demi-ovoid body. One piece of dough was very oddly shaped, so she made it into a pelican; another she made into a swan. I made a lot of wisecracks about the process, for example Mama's method of "strangling" the bird to make the head distinct from the body. J. joined us, too. Then Mama shaped the remainder of the dough into simple palm leaves. Then, when she had brushed the birds with milk and given them each a raisin eye, she placed the palm leaves where the wings would be, and its effect was very nice. The birds even came out of the oven perfectly baked, golden-brown, slightly toasted at the bottom, golden and moist on the inside.

When I was not in the kitchen, I was on the internet or roaming the halls of the house or cleaning up. There has long been a stately mound of clothing at the foot of my bed; I aired and folded some, put others in the laundry, and then laid everything away except for a heap of clothes that are not supposed to be machine-washed. I handwashed one cardigan, admiring how the rather bright orange became a beautifully subdued autumnal colour once it was thoroughly wet, kneading the thing and wondering whether I needed to use laundry detergent or something. As a result of my deliberations, and of my occasional tendency to overdo things, I took the bar of handwashing soap and passed it over the cloth. Then I hauled the sodden mass over to one of our clothes-drying racks, put one of our simple cloth rugs under it so that the wooden floor wouldn't become wet with the drippings, and hoped for the best. Anyway, I'm not doing any more handwashing until I see how the cardigan withstood it.

Then I thought of writing a story again, with the result that I took up a pen and one of my numerous notebooks, and wrote out information about the imaginary country which the protagonist of my scion-of-noble-family-living-in-Victoria story is supposed to come from. I've read quite enough stories with imaginary countries (Evallonia, Ruritania, etc.) that have pseudo-Slavic languages and people, and that always end in -nia; so I thought that I would never descend to that -- besides, I have no trouble keeping track of Russia's -stans and the Balkan states, so I can spot a pretend-state despite the -nia. But now I have become everything I most despise, for my protagonist is a proud (though expatriate) Alisanian. Alisania, population 65,920 according to a 2003 census, is a moderately wealthy ex-principality, speaking predominantly Russian, German, and Alisanian. It was once part of Prussia, but became part of the Soviet Union after World War II. For the purposes of my plot, which would be too complicated if the protagonist is still a contender for the throne, I have decided that the protagonist's grandfather will have been a Quisling (well-intentioned, but a Quisling nonetheless), and that therefore the royal family has fallen from grace forever.

Anyway, after a failed revolution in the 1980s (which would come a year or two before the one in Czechoslovakia), in which the protagonist's parents died, Alisania became automatically independent as the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Then it turned into a democracy; I must still determine whether it has a unicameral or bicameral legislature, which powers the president has, and how the power is shared between the legislative and executive branches (the Political Science 220 course that T. and I took is evidently bearing fruit). I will use the government systems of the other Baltic states to help me figure it out. The population as of the 2003 census was 45% atheist (a triumph of Soviet education), 23% Protestant, 9% agnostic, 8% Catholic, and 15% other. Perhaps it's ridiculous working and writing all of this background information out -- I suppose I'm the writing equivalent of a method actor -- but I like detail and accuracy.

As for the rest of the world, T. recently went to sleep; Gi., Ge., and J. are amusing themselves on the computer; and Mama, Papa and uncle W. are in the corner room smoking and talking. The day was sunny; trees are beginning to be flecked with green; the tulips in the middle of the street are already withering; birds chirp and sing freely in the courtyard so that one could imagine one is in the countryside; and the mood out on the street is appropriately springlike.