massive dragonfly

This dragonfly hitched a ride on my bike halfway across the city today. I thought he'd landed there and died, until I got where I was headed and tried to take a photo, when he of course immediately took off. I caught him (or identical twin) an hour later on this sign post, once I was done. 

Work was interesting, massive dragonflies aside. I saw an asthmatic who's being detained for murder and also got to take his dental impressions - which Sherlock is wild to see, just in case he can see some difference between normal teeth and murderers' teeth. He says he'll need a much larger sample size, so will I please bring home all dental impressions I make (no).

Also a drugs case where I was called in with the hope I'd get permission from a man to do what's rather delicately called an 'intimate search'. He eventually said he'd given it to his six year old son to hold, which is...I don't know what that is. I suppose it could've been worse. In several ways.

Anyway, I was happy to get home - to a lovely dinner cooked by all three of my boys. And now we're watching blood drip off of things at this link L found. 

lettuce yesterday and lettuce tomorrow

Someone asked if anything was ready to eat in the allotment and I think I said no, but there is lettuce, sort of. Lettuce thinnings anyway. And cress and various other things.

Lettuces

That's the entire harvest though - not really enough for a salad even for one person, let along three. I'm sure L will find something delicious to do with it though. Just not tonight. I gather it was worse than usually busy at work, and Mrs Hudson made us chicken and potatoes, which was very nice (and nice of her). 

Tomorrow...my first shift. 7pm - 7am. I'm looking forward to it. 

happy birthday, Mycroft!

(Look, I even capitalised your name, even though I never capitalise my subject lines because...I have no reason. But I know it bothers you to be improperly lower-cased.)

Mycroft is fifteen today. 

Fifteen. 

15. 

That doesn't look like any smaller of a number no matter how I write it. It seems enormously older than 12, which isn't exactly an earth-shattering revelation, but I'm still astonished every time I think about it. 

Mycroft, you're growing up into a wonderful, kind, thoughtful young man, and it makes me proud to know you. Happy birthday, and I hope this is a good year for you. 

Actually, Mycroft probably won't see this at least until tomorrow - he's studying hard as I believe his exams begin next week. Astronomy? I think it's astronomy first. So there can't be any weekend birthday trips unfortunately, but we are stealing him away tonight for dinner and cake and whatever else he wants - hopefully some relaxation, since school must be pretty stressful right now. 'Something quiet' was his request via text a few hours ago. We'll do our best. Might have to go and pick him up before Sherlock gets out of school to accomplish that. 

Sherlock is planning to make him this massive cake that is essentially two enormous chocolate merengues with whipped cream and berries in the middle. He wants to make it 'all by myself but Lestrade can help', which is how he likes to do his cooking these days. 

-

Fridge art on the International Space Station: 

pic by Chris Hadfield, Canadian astronaut

abandoned

Royal Marines out of Afghanistan. I'm pretty happy about that. I know a couple of those guys in 40 Commando and I've patched up more than a couple. Glad to know they're coming home safe.

In totally unrelated news, the comment in my last post from Kate L about abandoned places reminded me I'd come across this:

It's an abandoned hotel in Japan. There are a lot more pictures at the site. Very interesting. He has a link at the top to more places like this that he's documented. 

L and Sherlock are making chocolate and raspberry cupcakes. L has told me I'm not to eat all of them this time, which is really not at all limiting. Five isn't all of them. Ten isn't even all of them. I'm only saying. They smell really good.

Mycroft took Sherlock to the museum today, which is the second outing they've been on alone together without any major property damage, fire, or other catastrophes. I'm very proud - I mean, really, I actually am. They don't always get along perfectly, but I'm so happy they can go out and have a good time together, especially as both of them start growing up.

I almost literally cannot believe they'll be eight and fifteen in few months. Terrifying. 

souffle success

I made this. It...worked? Bit dense maybe? I don't have extensive souffle eating experience, so it's hard to judge, but Sherlock ate two of them, so it must've not been too bad. It was actually a pretty simple recipe. It made six, so Mrs Hudson got one, and security got the other. Hopefully they shared and didn't go for a fight to death or anything. They're more used to L's desserts, which are worth fighting over. Hopefully this has erased the shame of the cheese and vinegar incident from everyone's mind.

And here's a tiny bat for Sherlock (and everyone else who wants one):

Lestrade's feeling better, which is wonderful. Sherlock's not even fake-coughing, despite school tomorrow. There was sun today and it looks like there might even be more tomorrow. Things are looking up...and I'm reading about tasers. Or, really, TASERs, since it's an acronym. There's an entire chapter on them in Clinical Forensic Medicine.  Apparently the man who invented them named them after his favourite character: Tom A. Swift and his Electric Rifle (TASER). So, there's something I'm willing to bet most of you didn't know. And will never have occasion to use now that you do know it. 

spring and fall

More poetry...I feel I'm getting off lightly here while Lestrade comes up with actual posts, but I am enjoying it. I'll answer the question he did today as well, which was what he'd like to learn that he hasn't yet. 

I'd like to learn to cook, like he does, by just looking at food and knowing how it goes together and what cooking method suits it. I can just about get by these days if I follow a recipe, but it's not the same. 

I remember making something that called for six sage leaves and having ten or so left in the package. Lestrade said to just put them all in and use them up, and I said, 'But it only calls for six! Six is not ten!' I still get slightly irrational when I try to cook. 

I think I'd like to be able to write fiction some day too. 

Spring and Fall: to a Young Child
Gerard Manley Hopkins

normality, or something similar

Lestrade's at work. There wasn't enough time to cook dinner before he had to go so we sent him off with sandwiches and spider biscuits, and now Sherlock and I are making breakfast-dinner, with eggs and pancakes and bacon. It'll be good if I don't burn anything. Sherlock says he'll keep an eye on me. The spider biscuits will keep eight eyes on me.

L and I had a long walk around the park and a talk, during which neither of us cried in public, though it was a close thing once or twice. I'll leave him to tell what he said if he wants to, later. I don't think anyone here will be particularly surprised to learn that I feel responsible for not stopping what happened to him, for not getting him back sooner. I know that makes no sense. Knowing it doesn't help.

More than that though, I could feel this distance between us when he got back, and that was... I didn't know how to fix it, or change it at all, didn't understand why it was there, and all I could think was what if it got worse and I somehow lost him over this even after we got him back. So that was terrifying.

I think we're moving past that now though. At least I hope so. Still trying to work out how it happened, and I think it's at least partly the assumptions we make about each other. I think a lot of the time L expects I won't want to talk and tries to respect that and I assume he'll do the talking when he's ready and...yeah. Turns into a bit of a mess.

He said in one of the comments on my last post that he didn't mean to make me feel like his way of coping is better than mine, but I think pretty much the entire world and certainly all mental health professionals prefer talking to silence. I need to do better there.

And now if you'll excuse me, I think my bacon may be smoking. 

flourless chocolate cake

Mrs Hudson gave me this one, along with a discourse on what exactly 'stiff peaks' means. 

1.Preheat oven to 150C (300F) degrees and butter an 8 inch springform pan (this is one that the bottom comes out of, which you need because if you turned the pan upside down, the cake might come out, but only in bits, it's too fragile).

2. Melt 125g (4oz) bittersweet chocolate with 1 tsp vanilla, 1 Tbs coffee, and 1 Tbs brandy.

3. Add 90g (6 Tbs) butter, 100g (1/2 cup) sugar, and 50g (1/2 cup) of ground almonds. Heat until butter is melted.

4. Beat 3 egg yolks until lemon coloured and add them to the chocolate mixture.

5. Whip 3 egg whites until they form stiff peaks and fold them gently into the chocolate mixture.

6. Bake for 45 minutes. If you stick a knife or something in the middle, it won't come out completely clean, but it shouldn't be gooey either. Mrs Hudson said it should have 'moist crumbs', which it did, the second time. Sort of. 

quiet day

More dog walking and cake eating, but other than that, not much to report. I'm enjoying the Olympic tennis very much, especially as it looks like either Federer or Murray will get the gold now. I think it'd be a great boost for Murray to get it. He might even manage to win the US Open this year.

I'm still not sure what was going on last night that kept L out until all hours. I meant to wait up for him, but didn't quite manage it. Think I fell asleep somewhere around one, and I barely remember him kindly herding me off to bed when he got in.

The boys and I have been making plans for L's birthday. I think he'll be surprised, if not quite as surprised as last year, when he didn't remember it was his birthday at all. The plans include cake, of course, which I am making, by request, without assistance. The things we do for love... 

weird cheese

Yesterday, it was weird fruit; today it was weird cheese. I see a weird cheese and fruit platter in our future, since there was a limit to how much weird fruit the weird fruit salad would absorb before overflowing the edges of the bowl.

We have a stout cheese that's sort of geometrically patterned with little triangles and diamonds (my choice). We have a vampire cheese, which is crumbly and inundated with garlic (Sherlock's). And we have Stilton ice cream, which is of course not a cheese, but Mycroft insisted it was close enough. I'm not entirely sure I want to eat that one, but Mycroft says if I don't at least try it, I'm setting a bad example for Sherlock. Unfortunately, I think he's right.

We'd meant to go to the aquarium as well, but there were so many people when we got there that even Sherlock said maybe he could wait for another day. I think we'll have better luck going early. Thanks, incidentally, to everyone who gave us suggestions - I've got them written down. Might save Kew Gardens for when L can come with us. It sounds like something he'd enjoy, though I'm sure he's been before.

L's done for today and on his way home. I'm glad it seems to be going well for him. I suppose I'm also somewhat ambivalent about him going on this course. For reasons I can't seem to pin down. Anyway, it's done now, no sense dwelling on it. 

home

At a tube station I go through pretty often - nice to see Harrow up there, makes me think of Mycroft. 

Pip wanted to know: What is your favorite indulgent treat? Something that you absolutely love but don't eat very often either because it's so bad for you or it's just too good to have very often.


Hmmm. Maybe Lestrade's pasta with X number of cheeses - I think it's meant to be quattro formagio or something, but it's not really four; it varies from three to seven. It's cheesy and delicious. There might be cream as well? Not sure.

Before I knew him and ate his pasta of many cheeses, it was probably the chocolate cake my mum used to make on very special occasions - older relative's birthdays and things like that. It was chocolate cake with chocolate chips in it and some kind of butterscotch frosting. Delicious.

I went to get Mycroft from school today - out on the tube, where I took the above picture, and back in Anthea's 4x4 with her, Mycroft, two large bags of things Mycroft's decided he doesn't need at school, and two even larger dogs.

Dropped Anthea off, took Mycroft and dogs to the park, where the dogs ran as if they'd been confined for a month, which I know they haven't been. At what age do enormous hounds of indeterminate lineage start to calm down?

Mycroft and I walked and talked for a while and then went to fetch Sherlock. The dogs got many hugs from Sherlock's classmates. I don't think they've seen them since Mycroft went to school. There was a lot of face licking and vaguely concerned look from some of the parents, whether about dog germs or their children getting eaten, I'm not sure.

And now, as L said in his post, everyone's here, and it's warm and cosy and generally perfect. One of those nights you wish could last forever.

birthday dinner

Happy birthday, Gregory Martin Finchley Lestrade. I love you, and I'm so lucky to have met you.

Even if you did think I was a serial killer at the time.

summer

Yesterday was the first official day of the summer holidays. Weekends don't count, of course. Already I understand why my mother was so relieved when Harry and I went back to school. It's not that I don't like having them around, but a forty year old trying to keep up with a five year old is just an unfair contest. I thought I had things structured pretty well, but clearly I was wrong.

I resorted to letting them play dog bowling indoors.

oh, my heart

Dinner tonight included actual vegetables. (Sorry, food is taking up rather a lot of my brain with Mrs Hudson gone. She'll be back tomorrow, and I'll start talking about... Well, I can't promise more interesting things, but certainly different things.) In the mean time, veg:

Spinach, cooked in our one pan, with butter and salt and pepper. I think anything tastes good with enough butter. There may also have been parmesan on top. It's still spinach, all right? It counts. Sherlock said it was good and then started singing "Great green globs of greasy grimy gopher guts." What are they teaching him at that school?

He also said, after dinner, that he would like a heart to dissect and since I was a doctor, couldn't I get him one from the hospital?

"A human one?"

"Of course a human one. They don't keep pigs at hospitals."

"A pig one would be easier to get hold of."

"Pigs are pigs." Cue withering look.

This is what comes of letting him read Gray's Anatomy.

(Could I get him a heart? Well, probably. Could talk to Mike. Is this a good idea? Perhaps a field trip to the mortuary rather than body parts at our flat? Am I completely loony tunes?)

just chemistry

Shopping accomplished, despite the Weather. Mycroft thinks the Dogs of War need coats. We did stop at the petshop to check out the possibilities, but somehow I can't see Phobos and Deimos in pink tartan. Any road, I don't know what they are, but they don't look like delicate hothouse flowers to me, despite Phobos' new habit of trying to get most of himself in my lap while I'm trying to write.

"Get off, you immense slobber fountain."
Phobos: *wounded look*
"...Look, go find your frog and I'll throw it for you, all right?"

John Watson, soft touch for prodigies and mythological animals. 

It iced. Which is to say, it rained, and the entire landscape instantly froze the rain into a sort of crystal coating over everything. London under aspic. Beautiful and treacherous. Actually, yeah, a lot like the aspic my grandmother used to do. (Sorry, Gram.)

We got, among other things, self-raising flour. Not that I intended to try the biscuits again, you understand, but once Mycroft read about our failure, he gave us both a look that ought to have petrified a few limbs at least, if not outright turned us to stone from shame.

"It's just chemistry," he said.

If my life were as satisfying as a sit-com, he would've failed utterly as well, and we would've all had a nice bonding moment followed by a pizza, but this is Mycroft we're talking about. Of course his bloody ginger nuts were perfect.

(I'm actually quite stupidly proud of him, despite it being "just chemistry".)

inevitable disaster

Biscuits sound so innocuous, don't they? Not like making cake. Making cake sounds loads more complicated. Or bread. Or even a proper meal with all major food groups appropriately represented.

You may have thought I was joking about the plastic on the frozen pizza. I wasn't. Maybe that was a hint to leave the whole area of cookery well enough alone. But:

Sherlock: JOHN. JOHN. JOHN. BISCUITS.
Me: ...It's five in the morning. Go back to bed.
Sherlock: BISCUITS. I FOUND A RECIPE, JOHN.
Me: Why did anyone think it was a good idea to teach you to read?

All right, I didn't say that last part.

But, several hours later, I was actually awake, and Mycroft was off with his maths tutor, Ms P, and Sherlock and I were on our own, and he had found a recipe...

Sherlock: I don't think flour is the same as self-raising flour.
Me: They're both flour. We haven't got self-raising, and I'm not going to the shops in this.
This: *continues to bucket down*
Me: It says rub the butter in with your fingertips.
Sherlock: I'll do it! No, I can do it myself!
Half the flour: *ends up on the floor*

You can picture him standing on the counter in bare feet and periodic table pyjamas, bent over that mixing bowl like Dr Frankenstein over his creature. Phobos and Deimos joined us. They cleaned up the flour quite handily. By rolling in it. We now have ghost dogs.

Anyhow, here's the recipe. Chocolate Ginger Nuts. Hope you have better luck than we did. In the end, we gave up and ate the chocolate bits. Perhaps Mrs Hudson can advise us when she gets back.