A tight knot.

I made it! As promised yesterday, I did not exaggerate and was somewhat good. Didn't sleep well, though. Ellie stayed the night and moved a lot, Lily had a nightmare, so when I got up at 7am I was a little tired. But not hungover, which is great. The jamsession was awesome yesterday. One of the best local musicians came with his keyboard, and we were able to get out a lot of emotions and convert our frustration about the situation into something beautiful. A friend told me this morning: "Thank you for yesterday. I felt invigorated in the morning."

Yes. Exactly. That's it. That's music. That's jam sessions.

Honestly, I was a bit worried about the baking. We had a big order of 40 Brezeln for the local Oktoberfest (a little rebellion during the strikes), but to fill the oven and not waste gas, I reeled in some more, leading to a total of 76 orders - 80 is what fits into the big oven.

Now, what you have to know is that making a pretzel takes a lot of time. You have to roll out the dough very gently, and form a snake that is about 1 meter long. That is the hard part. It has to be rolled out enough so it doesn't retract again and stays in shape. That's not easy. Even when working fully concentrated and with the dough in perfect condition, it takes us at least 90 seconds to complete a pretzel. For 76 Brezeln, that's almost 2h - in that time, the first made Brezeln have already risen too far.

But in order to deliver the best product possible, all three baker threw in a night shift. Not for the money, this wasn't a highly paid job, it was more a marketing gig, and I had offered to do it myself due to that reason. But they came. As a team, for the company, for the business. And boy, did they deliver! Such an awesome outcome! Our clients definitely got the best of us, but in the positive, literal sense.

So, there I was, drinking coffee, dry hangover (that's what "sleep deprivation" is called in Ecuador), packing the some beautiful product, being relieved and plain happy. Went back home, just to find Ellie reading a book to Lily, snuggling. They don't really have a step-mother/step-daughter relation, but Lily is always happy for some feminine energy, and the easiest way to win her over is reading a book to her. We're reading Tatatuk, a typical Waldorf-School-Book, very sunshine out of every pore. I remember that my father had a version of it, and he read it to us, though we always went to public schools.

It's 26 days of strike now. There was a huge clash between military and protesters in Otavalo on Wednesday. Another dead. Many wounded. Everybody is talking about un-proportional violence, but what is that? It's not an eye for an eye anymore. It feels like it's a body for a scratch. An eye for a broken window of an armored car. Feels. Facts are spun like windmills.

Yesterday we "played" MJ. We shouted it. We screamed it. It was a catharsis. Only Ronny was banging the cajón to keep the rhythm straight. But it does seem like nobody cares about Cotacachi these days. We're still cut off. Almost nothing coming in nor going out. There's more and more unrest within the city, and I fear that the outcome will be a deep resentment between center and community. That there will be the point that the citizens themselves will not tolerate that the repression from the government will be handed down to them through the protesters. Although, holding a grudge is somewhat a national sport here, just like gossip and rumors. Activism isn't. Standing up isn't. "Only those who stood up once are allowed to sit down. That's why so many chairs are empty."

But isn't that the case everywhere these days?

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Post written for the #saturdayselections by Galenkp inviting us to share music in the

on Saturdays.

Please feel free to engage in any original way, including dropping links to your posts on similar topics. I'm happy to read (and curate) any quality content that is not created by LLM/AI.