Here's the homestead

Life's good on the ranch! I'm getting the hang of the kitchen. This week I've mostly been on main dishes. I made a mean Mexican yesterday, along with a great turkey. Today I mastered a pork loin and topped it off with bread pudding as dessert. One of the guests told me it was the best she'd ever eaten. (The bread pudding, that is.)Here's the outside of my cabin. If you look at the Web site www.lrrranch.com, it's the third one and the largest. That's because it's a duplex; there is another side of it, which I presume to have the same two bunk beds, a twin, two shelves, a kitchen table and four chests of drawers that I have.

It occurred to me yesterday that there are only four weeks left in the season, though. I'm staying another week to close the place down, but we're about close to the end.

The guests are a lot of fun. Most of them are, anyway. There are, of course, annoying things like people who decide at the last minute -- like as you're sending out food -- that they don't want the meal for the day, could you prepare an alternate? And there are really annoying ones who treat the place like a restaurant. Some guy yesterday wanted an omlette. Pardon, me, wealthy visitor, but that's not on the menu.

My bunk bed. Since Eran left, I'm in the bottom bunk. And now that Cesily left, I have it all to myself.

And there's a family right now who literally walks in at 8:29, one minute before we shut the kitchen down and clean up from breakfast and start lunch. Seriously, how many people do that in restaurants, even? And then of course, they order the stuff that takes the longest to prepare.

I had to hold back the other day, when, after waiting and waiting on that family, then finally serving them, we sat down with them to eat breakfast. The three of us can't eat until the kitchen is "clear," meaning all guest are fed and done with ordering. It's normally around 8, but this family has been coming in to eat about 8:15, and it puts us really back.

So we sat with them and chatted a bit, because it's one of the rare times we get to associate the faces with the names on their orders. And the woman tried to make small talk but had no idea of how silly she came across. She actually, in the course of chatting, asked us "what do you plan to do for the rest of the day?"

The other two cooks and I looked at each other, doing a nonvisual eye roll, and I finally said, "Well, we were going to go back and work on lunch now." And the woman was honestly surprised. She said, "Oh! Don't you get a lot of time to hang out?" It's like, uh, m'am, not when your family is so late all the time. We can't resume work until you're done, and when it takes you an extra 45 minutes to come in, order and eat, we're that far behind. And they do it EVERY meal.

See? I live in a log cabin! At least for four more weeks.

When I do get outside the kitchen, the ranch is great. I have only been riding three times, but it's great fun. I can't really go much, but I will on Saturday, my day off.

Last ride, I had Jello, who is a big, round horse and hadnt been ridden in awhile. During the ride, he missed his girlfriends back at the ranch and kept whinnying. Previously, I rode Levi, C.J. and Mr. T.

The Internet is fairly reliable, but has been more off than on the last couple of days. I've been online an hour now trying to post these two pictures of my cabin, which is about to be my cabin alone. My remaining roommate leaves tomorrow morning and I'll have it alone until a week or so to go in the season.

The ranch is pretty much booked until the end, except it's not at capacity booked, just every room is in use. Some people coming are singles.

most everyone working here is great. We have the particular fly in the ointment, and unfortunately I work in close quarters with him, but I am trying to deal. Vivian, who is the other cook, is absolutely awesome. We work well together and today, when the fly was off doing the lunch ride, we jammed at cleaning. I don't think it's been cleaned before.

After I post this, I am off to bake a pile of cookies. We have cookies -- at least three kinds -- available at all times. I am making chocolate chip by the four-dozen batch. And I made some really awesome butterscotch cookies yesterday.

Mmmm...