It's been about a week now since I moved in with the cowboy and we're managing ok, but I'm beginning to develop a Jeff Goldblum-like twitch that becomes apparent everytime I get too much exposure to company and not enough time on my own. I'm wondering whether this will gradually develop into a full-blown illness, much as Jeff Goldblum's character turned into a disgusting mesh of fly and human and I'll end up a gibbering wreck on the floor in about a month's time. It looks like I'm going to be here longer than the month I had hoped it would be limited to, because former meet-ees expected back in September have failed to materialise and new ones are few and far between and the writing work I've got pays so little for the amount of time it takes, it could take about a month before I earn a week's rent.
And in the meantime, I feel slightly more isolated than I did before, in a surreal world of Mums and babies because this area seems to be full of them, or at least the local shopping mall on the way to the metro (where the nearest shop is located) is. And it feels very disconcerting to be in the suburbs again, just like I was when I was growing up, having to accept yet again that I must do exactly the thing I don't want to do and hope that it's temporary. I hope there is a lesson in all this that I can learn just once and move on from, because otherwise this has been a series of years now of going to live in places I don't want to be (Prague) and doing things I don't want to do (have meetings with meet-ees) and not earning enough to get me out of here and onto something better (my whole earning life in a nutshell).
But I shall not dwell on this. The re-spinning of this whole experience would be: I'm now doing better paid work, I've actually got some ongoing paid writing work and I'm living rent-free with a boyfriend who's fairly easy-going. These are all pluses. Another plus would be, that one of the new skills I'm picking up here in the delightful Czech Republic has now stretched to identifying useful flora and fauna and indeed, fungi. You can't be a proper Czech if you don't have a good knowledge of which mushrooms you find in the countryside are good for eating and which will kill you. I have now got to 'mushroom picking 101' level by at least identifying viable edible mushrooms, but I couldn't tell you if they happen to have any close relatives that look very similar that might actually kill you. So, not quite Czech standard yet.
I was the first to spot the ripe hide of a huge mushroom in the field
that started our search on Saturday. It looked like a giant toad from the angle I first caught it at, but then I realised it was a mushroom that was a little too old for eating, but by going over to inspect it, we actually stumbled upon younger, edible options, which was rather good. And the meadows that followed (aren't they pretty?)
yielded one or two more,
along with lots of beautiful flowers and every so often, a sign showing the other wildlife we might be able to find here. From otters, to harvest mice, to vipers and little deer, I got to learn some useful names.
The harvest mice [myška drobná] in one of the other pictures looked so small and diddy that the cowboy decided this could be my nickname for the day.
We hadn't planned on picking mushrooms and we didn't have a paper bag to put them in, but we made do with tissues and a plastic bag and took them home relatively intact in order for them to then undergo the slicing and drying process that the cowboy always does.
Once they are properly dried, they go in a jar and can be used at any point in the future to make a kind of mushroom sauce that goes rather well with chicken and rice, which I must admit, is rather a yummy specialty of the cowboy's now that I particularly look forward to.
Having spent this weekend away in the mountains, yet again, without internet access and without much opportunity to read or write things because we went by motorbike this time which limits the number of things we can bring with us, I feel a great need to stay in Prague this weekend. But the cowboy wants to go and see his brother in another part of the countryside on the other side of the Czech Republic. I'm not sure I can do it. If nothing else, I need a break from weekends spent doing things according to his agenda and above all I need some time to myself. I think I'm going to have to look like the super bitch, horrid girlfriend he suspects I am, and just say no. In anycase, if I want to earn any money at all from this writing lark, I need to up my productivity, work all weekend and make sure I write about 10 articles in a week in order to hit the higher rate of pay allowed for anything over 8 articles from one Friday to the next. And with that, perhaps I should get going on the next one for them today.
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