Week 39 - Putting Food By

It was a perfectly pleasant week for the most part. I got lots of canning done, which was on my list, and made more progress in the house but worry for Tilde, my oldest cat, dampened my mood a bit by the weekend.

I ran errands at lunch on Monday and stopped at Big Lots, where I scored some fun yarn for only $1/skein. I took it to knitting for show and tell and everyone was jealous. Yeah, I know. I don’t need more yarn. But at least it was cheap. I know. That’s why my house is so full. Let’s move on.

I had lunch with Darla on Tuesday and we conveniently went to HyVee for salad bar. This allowed me to buy a few things I needed for my canning day, which was what I’d declared Wednesday, which I’d taken off for (wait for it) canning! With a huge pre-surgery to do list, the only way I’d get it done was by taking a vacation day and devoting it to chutney, relish and jam. So that was the plan.

I had thought I’d wake up at my normal 5:52 but didn’t, enjoying a bit of a sleep in. That put me behind a bit but I was still chopping fruit/veg by 9:00 so not too bad. But when I was still chopping two hours later, it was clear I wouldn’t be done by noon, which had been my wishful thinking plan. But I had the relish veg chopped and soaking and the chutney ready to go when I left for my hair appointment at 12:30. After grabbing BK for lunch, I went right back to it – cooking the relish and chutney and prepping pears for jam. Clearly that would go into the freezer because I was running out of time and energy. I finished up just before 5:00 and only had 10 jars to show for a day’s work, which was a bit disheartening. There would be more canning coming on the weekend but I was still glad to have gotten started.

It was a teaching week so Tuesday and Thursday afternoons went by in a flash. I had book club on Thursday and couldn’t face swimming and going right to the library with no dinner (I’d already had a meeting over lunch) so went home and ate dinner like a normal person. We read Unwind for book club and the discussion could have been hairy but despite the divergent opinions around the table, we had a good discussion. Just one more day to go before the weekend. Yay!

I took my car into the tire place for the 3^rd time on Friday and was happy that they finally could get my wheel fixed and without breaking the rusted part that would have cost me an extra $200. But the $200 I did spend didn’t seem to make much difference from what I could tell driving home. Still lots of wheel noise. Oh well. The tires were crap and now they’re cupped from the bum wheel so I’ll probably be buying new tires way sooner than the 60k miles these should have lasted. It’s always something. At least I was on the way home for the weekend.

I had some binge watching of Breaking Bad scheduled around my chores for the weekend. I started with 3 hours on Friday night and then interspersed the other 5 hours between chores on Saturday. I made a decent dent in the to do list so felt OK with my progress by Saturday’s end. After all, I still had Sunday to finish it all.

And finish I did. Since I would be spending some time in my bed in the near future, I stripped down to the bare mattress and washed all my bedding, switching over to the winter linens when I remade it. To the four loads of laundry I did, add 3 batches of jam – peach from Gordy’s family’s Colorado peaches I’d frozen, pear from Wednesday’s prep and mixed berry with the various bags of strawberry and raspberry puree I’d found when I cleaned out the freezer on Saturday. That was much quicker than the relish and chutney on Wednesday so despite starting after lunch, I had all three batches done and the kitchen cleaned up by tea time on Sunday. Jam gave me a much better bang for the buck than Wednesday’s savory canning had. Somewhere between all the weekend’s productivity, I managed to finish knitting 2 pairs of socks too. Nice.

But Tilde wasn’t doing well. There had been no improvement after Saturday’s vet visit, where I’d thought they do blood work but hadn’t. I went to bed worried. She looked just like Rebar and Toes, who both died of kidney failure. I was almost hoping it was diabetes, which the vet had mentioned, because that’d just mean insulin. I fell asleep knowing I’d be taking her back to the vet in the morning. All I had was hope.