Greatful

Is apple time over? Nope, not yet. Marc even bought a dehydrator for us to try drying some as well as making apple butter and fruit leather. He’s taken bag after bag to the folks at work and I’ve taken bags to the shelter, where Monica, the director, is busy making pies for the Food Basket organization’s food for the poor. Our neighbors have helped themselves and I still wake up to have a pile like this every couple of days. However, my processing days this year are over; a couple of weeks ago I tripped and fell in the basement and hit the cement floor like a sack of potatoes. Besides gargantuan bruising and sore muscles I hurt my right wrist very badly and may have even broken one of the small bones. It sure feels like it and has limited what I’ve been able to do. A break didn’t show on x-rays but the entire hand was also very swollen at the time so was hard to read. Since they wouldn’t cast that type of break anyway, I’m just going about doing all I can with it.

With winding up all the details for the final loan on the house and signing all closing papers yesterday we finally put to bed the whole cantankerous process of building this beast. It took exactly a year of our lives almost to the day and will likely take at least another one to finalize all the finishing details, the basement, and the yard and garden as we want. Stressful, exhausting, trying, more expensive than we imagined—it still is all worth it when we stand here and marvel at what we accomplished physically at our ages. Marc doesn’t work nearly as quickly as he used to, but he still gets ‘er done! 

There are a few tasks left for me to accomplish before the weather turns too cool; my main project at this point is completing the repainting of the shed. I’m also set to start baking up to 15 loaves of my peasant bread for the shelter’s bake sale on Sept. 19th where I will also be working the booth. This bread doesn’t require kneading nor does it use much yeast so it’s a two day process—putting it together one day then allowing it to rise until baking the next day. I use only one Dutch oven to bake it in; hence it’s a slow process to knock out 15 loaves!

Today is our 27th wedding anniversary and although we planned to take a break and go out and find a good Wisconsin fish fry this evening, Marc has been working such a hectic schedule that he has come down with a nasty cold. He asked for a rain check while he tries to recuperate this holiday weekend. 

I think our sunroom is going to have to wait for the future as well; we are running out of a weather window this year and quite simply, Marc has pushed his body and his stamina just about as far as it can stretch this year. It’s time for him to slow down and enjoy what we do have for awhile. I try and rein my impatience at wanting everything done and instead concentrate on the fact of what we do have rather than what we don’t. My new home isn’t located in my ideal location (that would be the Oregon coast) but it’s where life has brought us and I’m eternally thankful we have what we do have, we have each other and as far as we know, we’re in relatively good health to enjoy it all. This chapter of our life may not have all the adventurous highs of yesteryear but it also is not so full of the angst that can go along with that constantly changing lifestyle. We’re coming into the contentment side of things.