Tally

The count so far:

-Seven quarts of canned pears. I know, not a good count. I still have two bushels of pears slowly rotting on the porch.

-Eighteen quarts of frozen apple slices. That's pretty good.

I've decided that if I have to choose-- which it looks like I am having to-- I will go after apples and let the pears rot. Apples are much more versatile come winter time. Think of all the things you can make out of apples:

apple pie
apple crunch
apple cake
apple prieschka
applesauce
fried apples
apple compote

Now think of all the things you can make out of pears:

pears in green jello

(*crickets chirping*)

Now my comments will probably possibly be flooded with ideas for using pears.

Actually, bring it on. I need some ideas.

That is, I will if I get to the pears before they rot. Tomorrow I am going to pick and pick up the apples off of our other apple tree. It's a Golden Delicious, and those apples keep their shape when you cook them, and they are fairly sweet, so they work great canned or baked.

The apples I did today and earlier this summer are pretty tart, and get mushy/saucy when they cook, so they make good applesauce and, in my opinion, great pie.

So there you have it-- my points toward being a good Mennonite housewife this week.

(Also adding points are the foods I've been cooking (while preserving): whole wheat bread, apple prieschka, chicken soup with rice, cherry pan kooka (sort of like crepes, or creeps as Swede and MandoNut call them), baked potatoes with greva/cracklings.)

Oh, and by the way, to keep my mind occupied while cutting apples, I have been watching slideshows online of the fall fashion trends. (Why? I don't know. Seems a little inconsistent, doesn't it?)

I've come up with a great all-purpose caption for those pictures of those poor starving girls in those ridiculous outfits:

"Why do you hate me?"

I Hope This Isn't All The Better I Can Do

I've been trying to be a good Mennonite housewife this week.

I don't think I'm succeeding.

Monday I was tired from our Sunday activities, which involved early morning worship team practice, helping DrummerDude prepare for his first party, and helping host the party in the evening.

Which, by the way, turned out awesome. It's the first time our boys have ever had a young people party; usually we have family parties. This event involved guys and gals age 13 to 26 from three families, and they all got along famously. When they left they all said "We have to do this again! And next time mom and dad have to come!"

Which I think is pretty cool. How many teenagers do you know who want mom and dad to come to their next party?

So anyway.

I was talking about how STINKIN' TIRED I have been this week. It's just ridiculous.

I did manage to stumble around yesterday and pick up the good apples and pears off the ground under our fruit trees. Out of a couple of bushels of pears, we only had energy to get three --THREE!-- quarts ready to can.

Oh, please. It's got to get better than this. You have here a woman who in the past has been capable of canning twenty, thirty, even forty quarts a day. Not a measly THREE.

However, I also did Hubby's laundry, and baked bread, and made dinner, and supper (I know, big whoop, everybody makes meals, but it needed doing, and I DID it.)

I even took an afternoon nap, which, truthfully, I don't do very often. I limit myself to perhaps a fifteen minute snooze on the couch if I just can't keep my eyes open. But yesterday I slept for most of the afternoon, and I was still TOO STINKIN' TIRED to get much done.

Are you getting the idea? I'm STINKIN' TIRED of being STINKIN' TIRED!

But-- today is another day. The fruit waited for me all night, quietly rotting away, and today I will try once again to be a happy, untiring Mennonite housewife.

And now I'm EXHAUSTED...

...but not for the reason you think. You see, I watched a movie last night.

I don't watch movies, not REAL movies. The movies I've seen over the last few months include "Robots," "Monsters, Inc," "The Incredibles," "Toy Story 2." Okay, I've also seen "Enchanted," and "The Princess Diaries." But are you seeing a pattern? In general, I tend to watch, on the rare occasion I do watch, tame, light-hearted, family-oriented stuff. Stuff that makes you laugh and has a happy ending.

Well, the movie I watched last night was a little different. It had a happy ending, but it was not exactly light-hearted.

What happened was this: about a month ago, when Hubby and I were getting ready to go to Denver with Swede, I thought it would be a great idea to take my laptop along for the ride. I knew that I would have the backseat to myself, while Swede and Hubby chatted in the front seat and I was sure I'd get bored.

And I remembered that iTunes now lets you download movies to watch, so I thought, "Cool, I'll just rent a movie. I'm so hip!"

I did a little research, and narrowed my choices down to three, and the morning we were to leave I made my final selection.

It reminds me of the time years ago Hubby and I were on vacation. We were in Colorado Springs very early, while it was still dark, and we thought, "Hey! Let's watch the sunrise from the top of Pikes Peak!"

Oh the innocence of ignorance.

If you don't know-- like we didn't-- there is a gate at the bottom of Pikes Peak, that doesn't open till well after sunrise, and then you have to pay to go through it, and then it takes a good two hours to drive to the top.

We got to see NOON from the top.

So, about my movie.

I began downloading it, and was informed that estimated download time was eight hours. EIGHT HOURS? EIGHT? Are you kidding? Steve Jobs said nothing about it taking ALL DAY to download a movie. He made it sound quick and easy.

Suffice it to say that we were in Denver by the time the movie was downloaded, and it and the computer were at home.

All that to say, that since then I've had a rented movie waiting to be watched whenever I had a spare two hours. I finally got around to it last night. I figured I'd better, since I had two days before the rental expired, and that would be a total and complete waste of $2.99, not to mention the HOURS of download time, and the pain and agony of going on a trip WITHOUT MY LAPTOP.

The movie was Ladyhawke. Anybody seen it? It came out in 1985, and it was exhausting to watch.

The movie is set in the middle ages and the cast includes a man and woman in love, a disappointed and furious rejected would-be suitor, an immature sidekick who was in prison for pickpocketing, but escaped, a drunk monk, and lots of vicious soldiers.

The plot twist is that the man and woman have been cursed so that he is always a wolf by night, and she is always a hawk by day. They travel together, she as his pet by day, and he as her sort of wild pet by night. Always together, but always apart.

There is lots of killing (although DrummerDude said it's not as bad as Lord of the Rings--which, in that case, I've thankfully never seen), and Hubby said they left dead bodies scattered EVERYWHERE. There were also lots of swords, and horses, and beautiful scenery, and suspense. In fact, every possible moment of suspense was drawn out to the breaking point. To. The. Breaking. Point.

By the time the movie was over-- I'm seriously not kidding-- I was drenched with sweat and shaking. And that was after covering my eyes for lots of it and telling DrummerDude to tell me when it was safe to look.

At least it had a happy ending, but boy did we have to pay for it in emotional drainage. Doggone!

One of the very, very few light moments in the movie had the drunk monk telling the pickpocket, "I'd better see you at the Pearly Gates someday." And the pickpocket answered, "I'll be there if I have to pick the lock!"

So that's why I'm exhausted today. Completely aside from the hours of yard work I've done over the last three days, that made my muscles so sore I couldn't sleep last night, and had to get up and take aspirin and calcium and homeopathic preparations for muscle aches before I could finally rest. No, I'm not tired AT ALL from that.

It's all the movie's fault. Of course.

If I Can Make It Till Tomorrow I'll Be Fine

I can-- just barely-- understand an eleven-year old who has to sleep in Depends every night.

I can understand a certain measure of rudeness and social ineptness in children who have a less than desirable background.

I am beginning to understand a picky palate. (sort of.)

But I cannot understand an eleven-year-old who would rather wet her pants than interrupt her activity to go to the bathroom. Every. Single. Day.

A four-year-old, maybe. An eleven-year-old, no.

It's like Jack Sprat and his wife, only different

I've mentioned my prodigious cooking chores lately, I know. The idea of cooking for ten people is daunting to some of you, and others of you are laughing at me, as you gleefully set the table for you and your husband and your eight or ten or twelve children.

Just keep in mind it's all relative.

And even there you can snicker at me. Those of you cooking for three, you recognize the proportionate difference. If YOU were suddenly to find yourself cooking for ten, you'd panic and call Martha Stewart.

However, I am USED to cooking for six-- including two teenage boys, which everyone knows is a mammoth task not to be taken lightly.

As one of my favorite cooking quotes says:

"One more troubling thing for cookbook writers is explaining how many people a recipe will serve. Actually, of course, who knows? It depends on the people and the menu. So I've pussy-footed by saying 'servings,' which means that four servings could serve four people once or two people twice or one high-school boy for an afternoon snack."

So since I am used to it already, a few more shouldn't matter. Right?

Especially when you consider that often on weekends we have guests for meals and I often cook for eight or ten people.

Just not every day.

For two weeks.

It feels like cooking and meal planning and kitchen cleanup are my whole LIFE.

And yet... you know, I actually enjoy it.

Especially when I think I must have the best boys to cook for anywhere. They are so appreciative and say things like,

"Thanks, mom, you just ruined a perfectly good appetite."

Not like my niece's sister, who is eleven, and has been given to picky-ness over the years. Every year during their annual two week visit, we spend most meal times squabbling about the food.

I have never seen such horrible faces as that girl makes. You would think I had offered her last week's garbage a la dead raccoon.

But I've been reading some of your blogs, and learning about other children besides mine, and I think I've discovered something. This girl, K, is a DRAMA QUEEN.

Ah ha. The horrible faces, the rude questions ("What IS this?") the stubborn refusals-- it's all DRAMA.

So now I know, and I don't take it personally. I shouldn't have, I know, but I have never dealt with K's brand of rudeness anywhere else.

Tonight at supper we had leftover soup.

K asked me for a "no-thank-you helping" (one bite)--at least she's finally learned that rule-- because "I've never eaten that before."

Hello? We just ate this same soup YESTERDAY. And you ate a small helping then, and said you LIKED it.

For dessert we had fresh homemade cookies. She took one and tore it up into tiny pieces on her plate. I asked her what was wrong, and she said she was looking for the raisins so she could eat them. I asked her if she was going to eat the rest of the cookie with her spoon. She said, no, it didn't taste like her mom's cookies. They had a "strange taste."

Do you know how many things I've made this week that taste "strange?" I never knew. So glad K is here to straighten out my cooking.


Thankfully, wonderfully, my own boys--and LovelyDaughter-- tell me every day, "Thanks, mom, that was WONDERFUL."

I think they learned it from their dad.

Thank you, family. You're WONDERFUL.

Oh Republicans, Where Art Thou?

Okay. I just have to do a little ranting.

Everywhere I turn these days there is talk of the presidential candidates. But I only hear about two of them: Obama and Clinton.

Tell me. Has the whole country gone Democrat?

Where are the Republican candidates? And why is there no mention of them on NPR, or in the blogs?

Once again this morning I am frustrated by this. So, according to all the news we get, we only have two candidates for President this year, and both are from the same party. How is that even American?

AArgh! AArgh! AArgh!

Why, you may ask, am I tearing out my hair and screeching in frustration? I'm glad you asked.

Next weekend I will be running a computer with worship visuals for a conference. I just got the music today, and I find I have to input around 100 songs-- yes, 100! There is no way anyone can sing that many songs in a two-day conference. I guess the worship leader likes to have ALL of her songs on hand, just in case.

"Input" in this case means to open her PowerPoint files, and since the files will not import directly into my software, I must copy and paste the song lyrics on to new slides, adjust the formatting, and choose a background. I'm skipping messing with different fonts, and font sizes and colors, and shadows, and all the other cool stuff, 'cause with 100(!) songs there's hours of work here, just doing the basics.

I'm using LiveWorship which is wonderful software, and is making my job reasonably easy. However.

However, however.

It does not automatically save everything you do. Of course. No program does. (Except maybe Blogger, if it's working right.) Earlier today I had remembered to save my work every so often. Not so this evening.

And of course, the inevitable happened. Something glitched; a window popped up telling me something was "out of bounds," or something like that, and the application "must quit"; and the application quit.

I suddenly remembered that I had forgotten to save recently.

NO NO NO NO NO NO! I said, but to no avail.

Alas. Out of probably thirty songs I had done, I now have only nine.

I know I have only myself to blame.

But AARGH!

Somebody please feel sorry for me. It'll make me feel a lot better...