The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

I don't know where this week went! Last blog was Tues, how can that be???? Wednesday I was draggin' my wagon, not very energetic. Since Kristie, our dear daughter in law, stopped to help, we did get some things sorted and moved, and a little bit accomplished toward our goal, but...I was in bed by 7 that night. Hmmm. Something going awry healthwise perhaps. So, Thursday, I did a lot of thinking and brainwork from my recliner. Not much physical activity. My time with Lyme disease has taught me a few things. And one of them is, when my body sends signals it's worn out and tired...REST. How hard is that to do? Plenty hard some days.

OK, so Wednesday we moved and sorted paint buckets. And Kristie took canned goods home so I can make room on the shelves for this years harvest. Thanks to her...we did get something accomplished. That was good.

Thursday, I worked on my recipe calculator for the soap shop. I have a table in Word Perfect that I have set up to calculate my soap recipes, giving me all the ingredient amounts for the kind of soap I want to make. But, my closest soap making friend requested an addition. It was a brain challenge, and I needed that to occupy my brain while my body rested Thursday. After a good number of hours I did finally get it figured out, how to calculate pounds AND ounces, rather than leaving pounds as a decimal fraction necessitating manually calculating ounces later. AND also added a field that tells us what our water discount will be. All very soapy technical and means nothing to anyone but Rosie and I. It was a good thing though. Trust me on that one.

That was good.

Tom picked enough cucumbers for another batch of pickles. I did commit to canning pickles on Thursday and finally dragged myself out to the Summer Kitchen in the evening to do that. There were 9 quarts from the ones he picked. I did them without water bathing them because...

All the ones that I did before, the ones from last week, were mushy. I opened a jar...soft. Dumped them. Opened another jar, soft. Dumped them Right on down the line. No hope for those water bathed pickles. That is no longer an option in my book!~ That was BAD While dumping them hurt, better to do it now and move on rather than to keep them, knowing they were not going to be eaten, to be dumped at a later date. So, I bit the bullet, and dumped every jar. That was BAD

The batch I did Thurs shown here look good. As far as looks go. I'll let them set a week or as long as I can stand it before testing. This method, suggested by good friend Rosie, has jars hot in the oven, working quickly to fill with garlic, dill, cucumbers and pouring the boiling brine over them, sealing with hot lid and ring. Turn upside down for a few minutes. So far so good.

Tom asked me to help just a little on the House Project after supper. My job: sitting in the bucket of the front end loader, (looks harmless enough, resting on the ground, doesn't it?)wrapping a chain around the eaves trough, so he could back the tractor up and pull off the eaves. Sounds simple enough. I don't like heights, I especially don't like heights in an unstable front end loader bucket that's attached to an older, though well maintained tractor. The bucket positition changes with jerky motion...not what one with fear of heights relishes with enthusiasm by any stretch. I did find sitting in the bucket was easier than sitting on the top edge of the bucket. Was most happy to get feet back on the ground, even though knees were shaking! The BAD.

And the end result was complete removal of the eaves, plus a few passes at the bare, oh, what was that covering we took off???.....All that comes to my weary mind is Formica....brain fog is what this is...another sign I'm needing to rest more...oh, what is that stuff...insulation is made out of it, it's spun glass...this is called Word Search, Brain exercise, AKA FRUSTRATION. Ah, Fiberglass. Removed Fiberglass from greenhouse and porch covering. So while in the bucket I wrapped the chain around a couple supporting uprights and Tom gave a tug with the tractor. Pulled off a little of the wood. He had a more pressing project though so we quit that for the evening. And I was just as happy, that bucket and I were not becoming better friends with time and contact! Before.... and after....The Ugly!

And today, Friday, was a designated play day. If my hard work Monday and Tuesday didn't earn that privilege, that Bucket Adventure surely did! I met a new friend online in a Yahoo group called frugalChristians. A fun bunch of folks with an interest in being good stewards. Not tree huggers, just frugal. Good folks. Cathy expressed an interest in soap making. She lives a bit north of us, but was coming to the area today. And so...I got to meed a new friend face to face. It was yet another in an increasingly long list of Christ honoring friends God has brought across our path. Cathy said, "It's like we've always known each other"...and so it is. That special bond between believers is just that. We had a little tour of the gardens, the barn, the Summer Kitchen and a quick look at the soap shop. Lunch (tried out a new recipe, and it passed the test...yumm) was a chicken sandwich casserole...once that is put together the night before, and kept in the fridge...chicken, bread, mayo, milk, and cheese. Quite simple. And garden veggies freshly picked. Makes for an easy meal. Then to the serious business of soap making. It was full of surprises and lessons for us both. Even after making soap for 14 years ( wow, where'd that time go???) I can still be intrigued by what happens in that soap kettle. Cathy has the potential to become yet another Soap Addict. Key symptom: fondling hand made soap, admiring the depth of quality, density, translucence. Bet you never knew a bar of soap could be so interesting, did you? :-) To those so afflicted it's all that and more. And that was Good. Our time was well spent in every way.

That early evening fatigue settled in, and I went to bed early...however, wakened after 2 hours of sleep, and am still awake. My sleeper is broken. No two ways about it. Sleep lab study is scheduled for the end of August. Can't come too soon to suit me. This all adds up to CPAP settings needing to be adjusted, apnea breaking through, and resulting is sleep deprivation. Without treatment, appropriate changes in the CPAP machine, I'd be headed for the state I was in 2 years ago. NOT pretty. That was UGLY at it's finest. How's that for an oxymoron?

Now then. I think we are all caught up. And that is GOOD.