Fridays, one of my favourite week days. I actually favour most days, but some just seem more promising than others in the pleasure quotient they deliver. For me, puttering about in the kitchen for a defined purpose reflects pleasure. And Friday night meals tend to be special. The end of the working week for people so long accustomed to that kind of Monday-to-Friday working schedule. So that, retired or not we still divide our days into occasions when certain things are done, out of habit. And also subconsciously, I believe, to give order to our lives.

For we two the mornings go quickly, and mostly in relaxed mode, when we take our time over breakfast and enjoy every minute of it. Our activities have of necessity this past year revolved around our house. And we're fortunate that we have a house to ourselves during this time of hard-to-believe, hard-to-manage social distancing. So we focus on our home and our  being together sharing every little experience. Well, truth is, we always have, but now there's a greater intimacy about it all in a sense, a 'we're in this together' subterranean thought, an oppression of thought actually, with a tinge of trepidation.

 My husband doesn't have to think too hard about how he'll occupy himself. He just has so many interests. And generally during the winter he has planned for one project after another to tend to and complete and find satisfaction in. So he spends several hours downstairs in his workshop, and I spend those hours upstairs doing things in the house that every household demands of its occupants.

I haven't baked a chocolate cake in awhile, so that's what I decided we'd have for dessert tonight. I hadn't bothered to bake anything on my birthday other than the quiche, so this would be my birthday cake, three days later. I had at one time baked on occasion chocolate-Maraschino-cherry cakes which my husband enjoyed, so that's where my choice lay this time. The original was out of my half-century-old Jewish-American cookbook.

 Only this time I decided I'd change the recipe and make it my own, altering and adding ingredients to reflect how I thought it should be. The finished product looks fine. It was baked in two layers, with chocolate butter-cream icing between and on top. It has yet to pass the taste-test. I also thought that instead of the usual Friday night meal I'd alter that, too.  Not the chicken soup and rice, that's obligatory for Friday night, so we'll have that.

I once also made paella, and haven't for many years, so paella it is for tonight. And I'll be curious to see how that turns out as well. So will Jackie and Jillie, no doubt. I've had a short-grain rice for ages in the pantry that I've never used, since my husband most enjoys oriental-style sticky, long-grain rice. This time it's the short grain that I used in the dish that is now in the oven.

Earlier we'd taken Jackie and Jillie out for our daily spin through the forest trails in the ravine. A fair number of other people were out as well, some with their companion dogs. At one point we came across a group of five children, aged around eight, nine and ten. They were making a run at the top of one of the hills and then more or less throwing themselves down, backend first on the hill, to see how far they could slide down without sleds. And they were having a barrel of fun. Nice to see kids out on their own having fun together like that. Reminding us of when we were young ourselves and that was the norm.