Domestic Wanderer

Still no kitchen. Still no kitchen. Have the urge to bake something. A cake, cupcakes, macaroni and cheese like my great aunt used to make when I was younger. I want to sit at the kitchen table like I used to on Friday nights when everyone is gone out, with a tea and some paper. Every few minutes get up and check the progress of something. This more than a month away from happening again.

I could pack up some pans, and wander to friend's kitchens. Be the domestic wanderer. Searching for some oven to stick some muffins in, tables and chairs to rent out with a story, washed dishes, and a drawing. Craving the stability of appliances where they are supposed to be. Wander to somewhere that does not have an unplugged stove in the living room. That would be anywhere I guess.

You can't just show up at someone's door with an old mixer, and cookie mix in your bag, and expect them to let you in. You do have a key to a backdoor. To do what with though? To come in like a thief, bake something, clean up, leave half, then leave?

It always feels weird leaving someone's place like that. It reminds me of sleeping over. Not the kind of sleepovers you had when you were little. When you woke up, someone's mother would make you eat cereal, or cook pancakes, and try to get you to tell them about your favourite subjects in school. These are the adult sleepovers where you find yourself on someone's couch, or on the floor. Waking up in the morning, and sneaking out like you were never supposed to be there in the first place. That there is some looming, half-imagined mother's nagging voice in your ear telling you that this isn't what respectable people do.

Respectable people bake though.

I will say that baking a cake, crossed with unannounced arriving at someone's house, plus cleaning up afterwards, plus art, plus a copy of a zine, will equate to something a normal person might do.