I stumbled out of bed at 0-dark-hundred this morning to start baking bread. The cats and the dog looked up at me sleepily as I brushed past, probably wondering what the crazy human was up to now. Down in the 40's made it chilly enough for a zip-up hoodie before going out to feed the third cat (who will yowl and climb the screen door until I do) and turning on the dryer for the load of laundry.

The other human member of the household had just gone to bed (remember, he's going through the rebellious teenager phase). I could hear the trash trucks in the distance, approaching our neighborhood for their pickups.

I've read so often about pre-Industrial Age bakers arriving at their bakeries in the pre-dawn chill to fire up their ovens and give the dough another final kneading before shaping it into loaves and putting the loaves in to bake. I felt a part of that same tradition.

Now, where did I put those fishes?