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sweet weekend
October 31, 2016,
I actually had a pretty decent weekend. On Friday, after work, I stopped at the Festival to pick up their BBQ rib meal deal for dinner, and decided to build myself an epic salad at their salad bar, to take home for my lunch. It was quite the masterpiece. $10.76 worth of masterpiece, to be exact. and at the price per pound they get, that works out to about a 25 ounce salad. Being lazy, I dressed it at the store, so that weight included the salad dressing...but still, quite the big salad. Quite yummy as well!
After my salad, B and I took our usual Friday afternoon nap, but I was up after a little while, and decided to get some housework out of the way. One thing led to the next, and by the time Spouse got home, I'd cleaned the bathroom, washed dishes, cleaned out the dish drainer, swept and scrubbed the kitchen, straightened the living room, dining room, and my bedroom, vacuumed all the carpets, done 2 loads of laundry, and had the rib dinner heating up in the oven. Amazing, what energy I have after a little "me" time.
I got up early on Saturday, since B had to get his thyroid pill right at 5:20 am. He had a blood test and physical at 10:20, and they want him to have his pill exactly five hours before the draw for his T4 levels. I puttered around, did some odd chores, advanced the laundry, and had coffee and a danish before getting ready to go out. There was no point in trying to get an early start on errands, since B's appointment was smack in the middle of the morning.
He did very well at his physical; his doctor said he was looking extremely well for his age, admired his weight loss, recommended a course of treatment for his ears and leg lesions that didn't require me shelling out for a lot of new meds. Then he got his blood drawn, nails clipped, and a buttload of shots, and then we shelled out three c's and came home.
We got the pooch settled, Spouse chatted with Auntie on the phone for a while, and then we headed back out to do the shopping. Which was exhausting, because we got to Costco much later than usual, and had to deal with the Saturday mid-day crowds and the asstards that treat the samples like a buffet...PLUS they were having a trick-or-treat event in the store, so it was rather chaotic. They were out of both things I needed from the pharmacy counter, too. Ugh.
Meijer wasn't much better; very busy, crowded, and chaotic. I was relieved to get out and get home. And once I'd put away the shopping by myself, (Spouse was "too tired" to help) and re-booted the washing, we had a sandwich for lunch, and I crashed for a long nap, because all that human contact used me up completely. Spouse must have perked up some, because while I was napping, he was making a large pot of his marinara sauce for freezing. I woke up in time to decant it into the freezer containers and start dinner--we had some of the sauce over fettucine, with salad and garlic bread.
On Sunday morning I slept late, but I think that made things worse, not better, bercause I was still feeling kind of mudgy. I told Scott that there is no better example of how introverts work than the contrast between my Friday afternoon, and my Saturday.
But after my coffee and some more puttering around, I was a bit better. We got cleaned up and went to Mason's for breakfast--I had the corned beef hash, but regretted it-- because although it was amazingly delicious, it gave me ferocious heartburn all morning.
The day got better, though. After breakfast, we went up to Farm & Fleet to get Spouse a new zip-up hoodie, and I picked up some supplies to put away towards holiday baking and candy making, got a cute little lighthouse garden ornament on clearance, all ready for next year,
and, through diligent searching through the menswear racks, I located the last remaining grey, heavy-weight, 3xl TALL, Carhart Rain-Shedder zip-up hoodie!! As an old menswear pro, I refuse to be defeated by somebody stashing an item on the wrong rack because they A) want it to be there when they come back for it, B) are too lazy to put it back correctly, or C) think that if they pretend to find it on a cheaper rack, the store will honor the lower price. Their website said it was in stock, so I wasn't giving up without a fight, LOL.
On the way home from Sturtevant, we came down 22nd Ave, and as we passed the fire station, we noticed that they were having a food drive for Vets in Need. Well, if there are three things we have a soft spot for, it's veterans, food drives, and firemen. (That last one is mostly me, to be honest.) So we detoured over to Festival and picked up $35.00 worth of non-perishable staples to take to the food drive. We were shooting for $40, but Festival's prices were even better than we had realized. Believe me, that $35 bought a LOT of items. And it is always personal delight to enjoy the look on faces of the food drive staffers when you show up with a whole bunch of bags.
The firemen shook our hands and thanked us repeatedly, which was very sweet of them.
Once we got home, I decided to take some photos of my tree and send them to Cuz, so she could see how much it had turned in a week's time. Which led to me doing some cropping and resizing, and using them for pc wallpaper.
In the afternoon, it was Spouse's turn to take a nap while I pottered in the kitchen. I have been wanting to do something with all of the frozen berries I had stashed away, so I made a batch of homemade mixed-berry jam. I wasn't in the mood to kill myself, so I made freezer jam, instead of the cooked kind. I had low-sugar pectin, so I used the recipe from the package insert. Not totally thrilled, TBH. I wish I had used fruit juice instead of water to boil up the sugar and pectin, because a cup of plain water and less sugar leaves it a bit bland. I ended up with 7 8-oz jars, plus I took the residual jam and the excess mashed fruit and mixed them together to make a pint of berry pancake syrup.
That whole project went really went quickly (I spread my fruit out in a foil roasting pan, and speed-thawed it in a warm oven), and with minimal mess. So once I was done, I did the last load of wash, and sat down for a half-hour with a nice cup of Earl Grey.
After that, it was 3:20, and time to start my dinner--pot roast in the pressure cooker takes less time that in the oven, but it still takes time. I was shooting for two meals, too, so I had lots of vegetables to peel. By the time I everything peeled and cut up, set up, started and up to pressure, cooked it at high pressure for an hour and ten minutes, gave it ten minutes, bled off the steam naturally for 10 minutes, and then manually for another 5 or so, pulled out all the meat and veg, and made the gravy--it was definitely dinner time. Really, all that is much easier than it sounds, but the time is what it is. We sat down to dinner at 6:00 pm.
It was delicious, as always. And the nicest part is that we had the same lovely meal on Monday night, but all I had to do was turn on the oven and shove in a pan.
After dinner was eaten, and the mess cleaned up, Spouse went to his room to read, and I sat down with my laptop and spent a couple of hours geeking out, drawing a new Excel picture. I was going to do another storefront, but it somehow morphed into a Southwestern-style adobe church on me. Oh, well, art's gonna do what art's gonna do!
So, the tally of freezer filling for the week ended up being: 4 jars of homemade applesauce, 4 tubs of homemade marinara sauce, and 7 jars of mixed-berry jam. Not too shabby! Such a cozy, satisfying feeling to know you have all that bounty on hand.
And the happiness tally for Sunday was pretty good, too.
Reading: "The Laughing Girl" (1918), by Robert W. Chambers
Listening: Wolf Alice, The Roches, Kings of Leon, X Ambassadors
Inked Up: Nothing new inked, but I did kind of give in to an urge, and place an emergency "morale-booster" order to Anderson Pens last night. Nothing spectacular; just some new ink samples, and a couple things off of the clearance sale.
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