I guess this is why they call it Labor Day Weekend

There's just so much to do around here. I get overwhelmed and then just sit down and read a book. Not very proactive. But, I did get a lot done despite my literary escapes.

Friday morning, we had huge storms. Our power went our around 10am and finally came back on again around 6:30 pm. I don't mind the lack of electricity that much, it was day time, I've got a gas stove, we didn't need the heat or a/c on, so no big deal. What I do hate is the lack of water. This doesn't happen when you have city water, but in the country, you've got your own well which pulls water up from the ground and through your pipes using, you guessed it, an electric pump. Fortunately, since I try to be on top of things, I keep a large supple of water stored up in our basement in old orange juice bottles, so it would be awhile before we really felt the hit, but you don't realize how often you wash your hands until you don't have a working sink.

Fortunately, Angel #2 and I were invited to a friends house for lunch on Friday, so we had a perfect excuse to escape our waterless home and have a delicious lunch to boot. After lunch, we hit a few rummage sales before going back home. WE had a cross-country meet on Friday evening, so when we went to town to pick him up. He had an awesome meet and beat his personal record in the 5K by 3 whole minutes. We stopped by the football field and watched the last half of the high school game going on. Our Panthers handily beat the other team, who had an even small team roster than we had, which is pretty unusual since we've got a tiny school. Theirs must be even tinier. One of WE's spring track cronies plays on the football team. This boy is a fast runner, but has a very unusual, unorthodox way of running. It's so unusual that though he was in full football gear complete with helmet and was only standing on the sidelines at the moment, I knew who he was from his posture alone. Now THAT'S distinctive!

Saturday, I put the girls on chopping and dicing duty and we canned up 9 pts of zucchini relish, 2 of cucumber relish and 5 pts of apple butter. I've got about 20 pts of apple butter made and I think it's safe to say, my whole family is sick to death of the scent of apple butter cooking down. I think we're done with windfall apples for the year, so thankfully, Saturday's batch should be my last one.

Sunday was a potluck after church. SO much delicious food and great conversation. I visited with an acquaintance I hadn't talked to in years. She was reminiscing about the days when my kids were little, laughing about stuff they did. I said that I was so pleased and surprised that WE turned out to be such a wonderful teenager after what a stinker little kid he had been. She said she was surprised he lived to see 4 years old.

Today, I'm going to see what else in the garden is yearning to be thrown into a jar and boiled to death. The girls and I are also going to participate in that age old, cold weather tradition of throwing wood through the cellar window and stacking it up to be burned when things get chilly outside. Since the weather turned this weekend and we've had to dig out our long pants and sweatshirts, that probably won't be too far in the future. After the canning and wood throwing, we're going to get this house in some semblance of order. It's been woefully ignored lately. It doesn't really pay to scrub the kitchen floor only to spill pickle juice, apple peelings, green bean clippings, etc, all over it right afterwards. But since things are getting dirty enough where I could probably just replant the garden inside, I think we ought to do something.

Sigh. Better hit the Publish Post button and get to work.