A New Approach to the Weekly Post

I'm trying something new for these posts.

 I've noticed that my blog has become more or less an informal public journal rather than a collection of essays (which is more what I initially imagined it would be). That's fine: I enjoy reading that type of writing when others do it, and I enjoy writing it. But cramming it all into Friday or Saturday (which is what I've been doing) means I'm not writing as consistently as I'd like, and it's hard to summon it all up at the last second.  I've noticed my editing skills take a significant dip too. 

I'm going to try and write and edit daily from here on out-- I feel like that'll help me be a bit more consistent. 

 Monday: 

Last night was rough. 

Bitty Baby seems to have had a relapse of whatever cold she had a couple weeks ago and couldn't get comfortable enough to sleep for more than an hour or two at a time. 

I took her straight to the doctor after dropping Little Boy off at school, and it seems that her double ear infection has made a comeback. She's now on a stronger type of antibiotic and currently cuddling with me and being feverish and grumpy, as she has been for most of the afternoon. Under the age of three, a sick toddler in this house just won't rest easy unless they're being held. 

In a typical turn of ironic timing, this weekend we bought 40lbs of rather ripe bananas, two boxes of mangoes, and a couple bags of peppers that are all currently sitting in my kitchen waiting to be processed (either frozen or canned) before they turn into various consistencies of slimy goo. It needs to be done promptly: preferably today or tomorrow. 

That's just the sort of high stakes tension we have around here. 

Tuesday 

Very pretty sunrise this morning, and a much improved toddler. 

Got started on preserving the mountain of produce we acquired this weekend. 

The bananas got peeled and put on cookie sheets in the freezer. 

Well, some of them did. I've given some away, and hung a large bunch of them with our "snack" fruit.

 A lot of the rest, I decided to bake. I ended up making banana bread, muffins, and cookies (which turned out weird... almost like little mini pancakes. I followed a recipe, not really sure what happened).  The bread went straight into the freezer. The rest we'll eat over the next few days. 

We also bought a couple boxes of mango. 

They're much bigger and fleshier than I realized. Two mangos made a lot more jam than I thought they would.  

Still to be processed are some spicy peppers, some bell peppers, and all the mango and banana I didn't get to today. 

Wednesday 

Woke up this morning to a mountain of dishes, to the point where I tried to get some done even before doing school drop off. Turns out that when you spend the whole day doing kitchen based projects and then have normal meal prep on top of that, cleanup can get overwhelming. 

I started on the hot peppers this morning (they're called Anaheim peppers, very big and mild enough that I don't have to use gloves to handle them. Similar to a poblano pepper). 

Got them diced up and put in the freezer. I decided to take some loose seeds and a couple dried chili piquine and toss them in the blender with some water to make natural insect repellent for the garden. There's a lot of insect damage on the green beans. 

There's also a cute baby pumpkin! 

We're going camping in the near future, so I've also got the RV to clean and pack. Apparently a pack of roaches decided to throw a rager in the kitchen drawers, so this has become far more involved than I'd like it to be. 

Thursday 

Thursday was a very full day, I spent a good chunk of it out of the house, and got absolutely nothing written. 

Friday

This is an aside, but could we please have a retreat center somewhere that allows mothers to bring babies up to the age of two years with them? Or even babies up to a year. 

I would love to go on retreat somewhere, but it's still impossible for Bitty Baby to fall asleep at night without me. It seems unreasonable to expect young mothers to choose between their responsibilities to their vocation and their need to nourish their relationship with God. 

Of course, there are plenty of mothers who can manage to leave even their very young children for a day or two. I parent differently than a lot of people, and a lot of what I deal with I'm technically taking on. Maybe this is a more individualized problem and I'm being over dramatic. Heaven knows I've got a propensity for that. 

Anyway...

On Wednesday we discovered the fridge is broken and it wasn't holding the proper temperature. This led to throwing a whole bunch of food out (including a LOT of meat), having to run to the store to restock a couple things on Thursday, and my husband having to spend a lot of time peering intently into the fridge's innards to diagnose the problem. 

We finally were confident enough to put stuff back in last night, only to find the breaker tripped and the fridge off when we got up this morning. Chris reset it...and it tripped again. So now it's plugged into the bathroom outlet via an extension cord. So far so good. 

I'm playing catch-up with the housework today: I've gotten pretty behind. It's actually been a good week on the whole, but a very, very busy one. 

I'm hoping the weekend is uneventful.