HURRY UP AND WAIT!

 No lizard counter for two days.  I'm hoping that's a good sign.

It was a gorgeous morning with the moon shining high in the sky.  Cool was the name of the game until about noon when it began to heat up.  I was a lazy bum this morning and spent NO time running OR walking.  It's time for sourdough!!

It takes a lot of stuff to get this going.  First you take the sourdough starter out of the fridge and feed it flour and water in specific portions.  Everything has to be weighed.  This happened at 7:00 in the morning.  No one ever said this was a FAST hobby.

The starter sits on the counter until it doubles (or more), before it can be mixed with the other ingredients.  That takes 4 to 12 hours.  On this day, 6.5 hours.

While I waited for that, and it was still cool, I began the tire game.  Good grief ... ladies, this is what MEN are for.  It took forever because the valve stems are not all accessible.  I increased the pressure on the front from 61 to 65 pounds.  The tires are rated for 80, so I should be just fine.

The problem are THESE valve stems.  This is for the inside dually.  It's made of rubber and flexible.  Just try sticking something on the end of that and pressing in.  The first time I let out more air than I put in.  

You would think the OUTSIDE dually would be easy peasy.  Umm NO!  Because they faced it the wrong direction and put a tiny little cap on that you cannot get your fingers on through the little hole.  What a pain THAT was.  

And of course you cannot FILL the air valve stem unless you happen to have a reversing whatchacallit.  Luckily I do.  It took some wrangling, but I finally got it done.  The back gets 60 pounds each per the door sticker.  Also rated at 80 psi, maybe I should put a little more in when I'm full of water.

In case you were wondering what I use to air tires up, this is my usual choice.  I have a huge air compressor, but it is too cumbersome to move around.  I actually carried this one in my Class A for its entire life.  Never needed it, but I carried it anyway.  Now they have hand held gizmos, though I'm not sure how they work.

With the starter finally at the perfect stage, I poured it in a bowl and added water, maple syrup, avocado oil, flour and salt.  I'm actually making sourdough sandwich bread.  It's my first try, so we shall see how it goes.  After three stretches with 30 minutes of rest in between because it's just SO taxing ..... it will now sit and "fluff up".  Once that is done, it will go in the pan and into the fridge overnight.  Like I said, this is an all day project.  Baking takes place the next day.

While the bread did its thing, it's a hurry up and wait process, I was bored to tears.  Here's Kitters giving me her early morning pats on the hand .... SCRATCH MY HEAD MOM!!  Yes, she got a little carried away, but stopped short of the whack she knows is coming if she put those claws out.  I'm pretty sure that's how I got that finger infection.

Back to the bread, here we are waiting for it to rise.  How much you ask?  I have no idea.  Nowhere does it say how long to let it sit.  Online, they came up with this idea.  You put a small piece in a glass of water.  When it rises to the top, your bread rising is done.  It never did rise to the top of the glass.  UH OH!  

And so I took it out of the bowl, threw it around a bit on the counter, pulled, pushed and shaped it completely wrong according to the directions I read later.  Into the fridge it went until this morning.  Now I think it's WAY too over proofed and will turn out ten inches high with too many holes.  This sourdough stuff is hard to learn!!

And so I will say Happy Labor Day Weekend with a beautiful sunset from the Mojave Desert because we don't seem to be having any here.

Here's my boy once again, needing a haircut, just getting caught lying on TOP of the high back of the couch.  I was always afraid he would fall off, but he never did.