Category Archives: Food

Weekend Roundup

My fibre arts stuff is detailed elsewhere, so this will be brief:

Saturday:
AM: Awful cello lesson. It’s been a while since I almost broke into tears. I’m at the I-can’t-do-anything-and-I-don’t-understand-why point.

PM: Shopping: Errand-running after the boy’s nap, mostly for Hallowe’en related itemry. We get a turtleneck and tights for the boy’s Superman costume (pattern plus fabric = more expensive). No rainboots, but we do buy him a new pair of winter boots he needs (size 11, yikes).

Night: I finish my green lace scarf after much hair-tearing, rending of clothes, and gnashing of teeth.

Sunday:
AM: Another shopping run. I become very annoyed when the kitchen scale on half-price at Zellers is nowhere to be found in the store. We do the groceries, then head out to the farm stand on the south shore to pick up our pumpkins and a whack of veggies. The farmer slips the boy some Hallowe’en candy, and a pair of the best apples ever to HRH and I. On the way home we periodically exclaim anew at how awesome these apples were. Seriously; best apples ever.

PM: I knit up the first swatch for my goddaughter’s wrap. Then I have to flee for my monthly group cello class, where I have fun but yet again can’t play to save my life It’s not even the playing that goes wrong; it’s intonation, timing, trying to figure out where I am note-wise and how to fix it so I can blend, and I can’t. I know this must mean my brain is working stuff out, but while it’s happening I can’t stand a single sound I make, and so I’m not terribly inclined to make sound at all.

Weekend Roundup, Thanksgiving Edition

Friday night I had a good cello lesson. We cleared up some fingerings in the Beethoven symphony, then I said I wanted to work on recital stuff instead of my lesson stuff. I’d been playing on Thursday night with the practice mute (a good hour and a quarter of practice, hurrah, although it meant I didn’t sleep well) and was struggling with making an Air by Bach sound properly smooth, and I’d worked on the Mozart duet and Ashokan Farewell too. I also finally said I needed to walk away from the Berceuse, because I was fighting it so much that it was causing more problems that it was solving. My teacher said that leaving it wasn’t a problem; we’d revisit it later. Although, she added, I’d been making progress on it, even though I couldn’t tell. The Mozart duet had good parts in it, and I have notes to help me focus on string crossings and smoother shifts. We worked out better fingerings for the Bach that made it so much easier, so I’m feeling better about that too. I don’t feel as overwhelmed by it all any more.

Saturday morning I took the boy out to run errands with me. We dropped some books off at the Melange and bought two candles, one for Thanksgiving (the boy chose ice blue) and one for Halloween (the boy chose orange, naturally). Then we went to our local yarn shop, and I’d mistimed travel slightly; we arrived just on the stroke of eleven, and it hadn’t opened yet. The boy stood there and burst into tears, and wouldn’t listen to me when I said the we’d just sit and wait; he thought we were going home. (Yes, my son gets upset when the yarn store is closed. Of course, there is a toy fire truck there, and he loves the spinning wheel and the containers of yarn, but still.) I’d managed to get him to sit on the step with me and look at the new drawing app on my iPod when MA arrived with her keys and let us right in, bless her. “Are we going to be here for a long time, Mama?” he asked hopefully at one point. I told him that I hadn’t brought knitting or spinning to work on, and that we’d have to go home eventually for lunch anyhow, but I love that he was hoping we’d be there for a while. (It may have been directly connected to the fun he was having pushing one of the wheeled storage containers of yarn around like a train, of course.) We got all the fibre I needed to spin for various projects, plus a skein of yarn for another Yule gift and one to knit a hat with earflaps for the boy. Somehow my list of things to make for Yule has tripled in the last two weeks. I officially have what Ceri calls a Knitlist. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

Saturday morning was overcast and gloomy, but the clouds were swept away for a bright though windy afternoon, beautiful weather for the wedding we were to attend on the south shore. Weddings of friends are always wonderful, because you get to see people you love in formal dress, something we don’t do enough of. I had the pleasure of handling the cufflinks for both the groom and best man, and assisted Jan with boutonnieres for the wedding party. (We were both on site early because t! was celebrating the wedding with assistance from HRH.) Lovely ceremony written by t!, sat with excellent people, touching speeches made by the best man and the maid of honour, and generally an all-round pleasant time. I want copies of the pictures others were taking because my own camera sat in my bag under the table. I think I was photographed more than I’ve ever been photographed at a wedding that wasn’t my own. Or maybe I was just standing with members of the wedding party a lot. We left around nine once the lights had gone down and the loud music had begun. There had been somewhat loud music throughout the meal as well, and I found myself kind of shouting to people across the table. Something irritated my throat in the middle of the meal and I had a coughing fit, which ruined my voice for the next day. All in all, though, we were with excellent friends celebrating a wonderful day, and it was a good time.

Sunday morning went out to Chapters to pick up the new TMBG kids’ album. I had deliberately waited a month and checked stock online to make sure it would be there. Well, it wasn’t. They looked on shelves, they looked in back, they finally concluded that it was somewhere in one of the ten pallets in back that had technically been received (i.e., someone had entered ISBNs, titles, and quantities from an invoice) but not unpacked. And the senior clerk I spoke with admitted that they were behind, and that it would take some time before those pallets were opened and shelved properly. I was thoroughly unimpressed. This isn’t the first time I’ve run into the “in stock but not on the shelf” issue at this shop, but it’s the first time they admitted to being so far behind that they couldn’t find it in the warehouse.

So the boy was disappointed (as were HRH and I, because we love TMBG’s kid stuff, too). Another book I wanted was also not on the shelves, despite there being twelve available according to stock check. I did pick up the copy of Amy King’s Spin Control I’d intended to come home with, though. From now on, I will call in advance, as much as I hate phones.

We did the grocery shopping, then I chatted with my mum and spun up another ounce of the yarn for my goddaughter’s Yule gift. We made cookies late in the afternoon, then I put the tiny cross-rib roast we’d bought in the oven for a somewhat unplanned Thanksgiving meal at home. It turned out perfectly, meltingly smooth, served with roast potatoes and carrots from the garden, drizzled with a separately-made onion gravy. Before we began to eat we lit the ice blue candle the boy had chosen for Thanksgiving and I asked if he wanted to say anything special. “No,” he said, “just Happy Thanksgiving.” I said I was thankful for food on the table, family and friends, and the roof over our heads, and the ability to enjoy our many hobbies and activities. And then we swooned with yum at the incredibly delicious food on our plates. The boy patted my hand during dinner and said, “I love you, Mama. Thank you for making this dinner for us.” He had seconds of potatoes and carrots, and ate every single piece of roast beef on his plate, impressing both of us. Oddly enough, he refused gravy. Once upon a time he wouldn’t eat anything unless it had gravy, so lo, we have come so very far. We’ve also come far in the successful roast beef department. Pretty much every roast I’ve done in the past few years hasn’t turned out the way I wanted it to for some reason. In fact, this one nearly didn’t; after roasting it for twice as long as I was supposed to it still wasn’t cooked through, so I hacked it into three pieces, laid the less cooked sides up, and roasted it at a higher temperature for ten minutes. The result was sheer perfection, so hurrah for my experience and instincts working together to actually get dinner on the table.

Once he was in bed I checked e-mail and discovered that I’d won… a copy of Amy King’s Spin Control in an online draw. (Insert whacking of forehead here. I am very pleased, of course, but also abashed.) So I will be returning the copy I bought and using the refund against the purchase of The Intentional Spinner, which they’ll need to order in for me. Not only that, I got a message from Aurora saying that she’d been in Vermont for Thanksgiving and had found a case of Vanilla Coke, and was bringing it home for me. An embarrassment of riches!

Monday we lazed about in the morning. HRH and the boy built a fort with a quilt and some chesterfield cushions, and the boy set up a Thanksgiving dinner inside it for all his stuffed animals with great enthusiasm. While he napped I spun up another ounce of yarn for the wrap. After his rest we went to HRH’s parents’ house for the official family Thanksgiving dinner, where I got another six inches of lace scarf knitted before dinner. Dinner itself was spectacular. The boy ate a staggering amount of turkey, half of it from the carving board before dinner itself, and the other half from drumsticks that he brandished like a pirate. He tried the stuffing and the purple cauliflower and passed on both of them, but ate several carrot sticks.

All in all, a lovely holiday weekend. Now we turn to winterizing, putting plastic over the windows and making things as efficient as possible. HRH put in the second outside window in our bedroom, and took out the screens in the boy’s room. We’d turned the central kitchen heater on last week and used the ceiling fan to circulate the warmer air when it went on, but yesterday we set all the room thermostats at 15 degrees, just to make sure things didn’t get too chilled. The outside gardens need to be fully cut back, and the compost spread over the beds, too. Snow has been spotted in the air not too far north.

Day Off

The boy went into preschool today and wasn’t sent home, so I assume all was well. I gave myself a well-deserved day off, which means I practiced the cello twice (once this morning and once this afternoon), wound off the yarn I’d plied last night (237 yards), spun some more single and plied it with the remaining single (another 43 yards, for a total of 279! and I still have some original single left), washed both to set the twist and hung them to dry (the second little skein is positively the best yarn I’ve done so far), made bread (twice, because the first one went horribly wrong because I forgot to turn off the low heat I’d set in the oven to warm it up before leaving it to rise, so the heat killed the yeast), made stew, and caught up on some web episodes of things.

There is a train horn stuck on at the bridge near us. It’s… insidious. It’s almost not noticeable, until one notices it, and then it’s Very There.

I feel so relaxed. Apart from the irritating tickle in my throat that has caused me to cough all day, that is, and the resulting headache. It felt so wonderful to sit down and actually play again. The cello sounds fantastic, with excellent ringing tones and nice sustain. Part of that is I’ve forgotten how good it sounds, but I like to think part of it is also due to my use of back muscles to direct the bow and keep an even weight on it.

Oh good, the train horn stopped. You never really appreciate silence until it falls after a very long stretch of constant noise.

Speaking of noise, it rained quite hard in the early afternoon while I was spinning, and I opened windows so I could hear it. It was coming straight down, and it sounded lovely.

Tonight I am off to watch another two OVAs of Maria-sama ga Miteru with Marc, and then tomorrow I will do the little freelance assignment that’s waiting for me. We were told that accounting was behind and so the cheques that were supposed to be cut last week and mailed out today will in fact be a week late, which snarls up my budgeting somewhat. I am annoyed, but there’s nothing I can do. Accouting promises that it’s an isolated incident and the rest of the invoicing/payment schedule for the year won’t be affected, but we shall see.

Aha, the boys are home. As I just took the bread out of the oven, I suspect we shall all indulge in warm bread with butter melting off it and onto our fingers before supper proper.

Weekend Roundup

So very tired. This cold is kicking me, and dealing with the boy’s cold and being home 24/7 is draining me even more. Plus it was a packed weekend (of course).

Before the weekend roundup begins, it is important to note that on Thursday night, I rejoined the Thursday night gaming group for the first time in, oh, possibly almost a decade, because HRH rearranged the basement office to make room for a table and chairs and the gang came over here so that both HRH and I could be in the game at the same time. I’d originally dropped gaming because I was burnt out, and then there was the boy and someone needed to be home with him, so even though the spirit was willing, getting a babysitter every Thursday night was not remotely possible; besides which, the fibro over the past handful of years (pre- and post-diagnosis) makes evenings out doubtful. But the compromise of being in one Thursday night game a month(ish) and in my own home is very doable. MLG has launched a new Star Trek game which promises to be very exciting, and it was very flattering to have so many people thrilled that I was back. I’ve missed the gang, and it’s great that they’re willing to move that one game in the four-game rotation to a place where I can participate.

I got an e-mail Friday afternoon from the freelance coordinator, who congratulated me on my patience and courage in handling the horrific project I’d handed in Thursday night. And my new assignment landed, which is a lovely little 23K word general fiction manuscript to evaluate, which I suspect was cherry-picked for me after the nightmare, bless them. HRH came home at lunch on Friday, and Friday afternoon we went to HRH’s parents’ house to belatedly celebrate his mom’s birthday. It was much more relaxing than I expected it to be, and I got another inch knitted on my lace scarf. I had a good cello lesson on Friday night, too, which helped. I was upfront about my lack of energy and focus, so after we worked a bit of Mooney we sight-read the Mozart duet that M and I are playing for the recital this December. It’s just lovely, and amusingly/conveniently enough it hits all the things I need to work on: smooth bow changes, listening, timing, and expression. I didn’t hate everything I played, which I tend to do when I’m tired and can’t remember new instructions from one moment to the next. The pretty melody helps a lot with that. I love to play it. I’m so fortunate that my teacher understands that I have a condition with fatigue and focus issues, and is willing to work with me through them.

Saturday morning we did groceries and I baked. I made a double loaf of herb bread with half white and half whole wheat flour and an apple cake to take to the harvest ritual at Rowan Tree Farm that afternoon. HRH headed off belatedly to deliver things and pick Amanda up and didn’t get back till half an hour after I’d wanted to leave. As RTF is an hour and a half away that means we got there an hour later than the suggested target time. We had a lovely harvest ritual in which we counted our blessings, and then t! and Jan feasted us with local venison and boar sausages, lamb sausage, locally sourced beef, and the side dishes the guests had brought. We had to flee around seven-thirty because the boy had to get home and HRH had a bachelor party to attend back home. I felt rushed, which on top of the cold and increasing fatigue due to said cold and small boy being home sick made me disinclined to be social.

Sunday morning was Pagan playgroup, which HRH attended with us because I was too fatigued to drive safely. The coordinator was delighted to see him, especially since half the kids were missing. It was a really nice low-key day. On the way home we stopped at a pharmacy so I could finally pick up cold medication for myself. After a chat with my mum and a light lunch I napped while the boy did, and then Ceri came over for a wonderfully quiet afternoon of knitting… which neither of us did. I spun another threeish ounces of Corrie, and she crocheted. And the boy learned how to use the ball winder, an event he has been looking forward to for ages. (How many four year old boys do you know who can correctly identify a ball winder in a catalogue?)

He was very excited about making ‘yarn cakes’, and stacked three of varying sizes into a wedding cake-like configuration. Ceri got to use the skein winder in conjunction with the ball winder too, which was very exciting once we figured out the angle necessary so the thing would actually turn to wind off the skein while she wound it into a centre-pull ball. And we discovered that if I mount the skein winder on the wheel post backwards, I can keep spinning while it’s being used. Efficiency!

HRH handled dinner and let me have a bath, for which I was extremely grateful because the fatigue was getting worse. After dinner we put the boy to bed, Blade came down to be the Designated Responsible Adult On Site, and we headed out to our monthly steampunkian horror game chez Tal. Everyone was tired, so it was a very brief focused game in which yet more puzzle pieces dropped into place and important info was added to the clues we already had.

This morning the boy is home yet again, because his nose is still unpredictable and every few hours there’s a nasty coughing jag. As bronchitis popped up at the school twice in the past couple of weeks, I’m taking him to the doctor today (if there’s an appointment free; can’t call till nine, and the line will be swamped with everyone calling in after the weekend, grr) to make sure all’s well with him. If I can’t get an appointment, I’ll try sending him in tomorrow.

Speaking of which, I’m off to brave the phone lines. Wish us luck.

ETA: Forty minutes to get through… and the doctor’s not in this week. The nurse asked if he had a fever (no), if there was anything alarming (no), was I giving him anything for it (yes, an expectorant syrup), said that a lot of the viruses (virii?) going round left lingering dry coughs that weren’t indicators of anything serious, and to take him to a clinic if it hasn’t cleared up by the end of the week. Fine; Plan B it is! Keep him home today, send him in tomorrow.

Weekend Roundup With Bonus Monday Material

Sushi Friday night! This was a long-awaited treat. We went to our favourite sushi restaurant with Jeff and Paze, and as we went out after the kids were in bed there weren’t tables when we arrived. We chatted at the bar for about half an hour or forty-five minutes, and when we finally got a table the chef sent over a treat for us as a thank you for being so patient. It was one of his personal creations, not on the menu, and was delicious: a roll of salmon around tuna and what may have been red snapper, all wrapped in nori and lightly sauteed so that the first five millimeters or so of the salmon were barely cooked, all drizzled with a gingery sesame-chili-green oniony sticky glaze that we all scraped up with our chopsticks after the roll was gone. Oh ye gods, it was all heavenly. The tiny bit of cooked salmon contrasted so beautifully in taste and texture with the raw. I want to be kept waiting for half an hour every time now. We also learned that they’re expanding! Finally, after a decade of going to this tiny restaurant that seats maybe thirty people, they’re taking over half of the next space in the mall, so we’ll be able to bring a party larger than four people, which currently strains the seating. (Perhaps they will also take reservations. You never know.) We’re very excited about this, not only for our benefit, but because it means the restaurant is doing so very well. They opened two new locations over the past few years, one in Vaudreuil and one in Laval, but this one has stayed tiny and intimate. I can’t say I’m thrilled with their switch in music from jazz classics to modern pop, but everything else more than makes up or it. Dinner was, of course, delicious.

Saturday morning I headed out to my cello lesson, which was pretty intense in the focusing department. It was also very physical in that we spent a lot of time talking about back muscles and doing various exercises in order to isolate their movement. I also got to choose between two pieces for my solo in the upcoming Christmas recital, and I chose another duet with M, a lovely two-cello arrangement of Mozart’s ‘Canzonetta sull’ aria‘ from Le nozze di Figaro. I get to play Susanna! The lesson was good, but by the time I headed home I was drained, exhausted, and dizzy, and when I got in I knew that I was going to be useless for the rest of the day. This was problematic because I’d scheduled a very necessary grocery run and various errands, most birthday-related, and then had to drive to the south shore through a detour around the reserve to get to my in-laws’ house for HRH’s mom’s birthday dinner. (HRH was being picked up by his dad that morning in order to go help put a new fence in.) Well, the day got shafted because I couldn’t focus enough to drive, which made me even more irritated than the original irritation about being downed by the fibro. The boy and I stayed home all afternoon, napping together, watching movies, and making cupcakes. In the end we rescheduled the birthday dinner for next Friday night and HRH’s dad brought him back home again, going above and beyond the call of duty by crossing the bridge and traveling the associated detour four times in total.

I was climbing walls by that point, so HRH insisted that we head out to make an appearance at Scott’s birthday gathering after the boy was in bed. As I didn’t have to drive I agreed, with the proviso that the moment I felt not-good we had to leave. Things went rather well, and there was excellent company. I spent a couple of hours watching people play the new Beatles Rock Band game while HRH drummed or sat out, and he even pulled off a very impressive vocal performance of ‘Yellow Submarine’. We came home to bed at a reasonable hour. Blade is to be commended for being the Responsible Adult On Site two nights in a row.

Sunday morning we went apple picking! I have never done this before. Formally, I mean; I’ve pulled an apple here and there from people’s trees to eat as a child, but I’ve never done the full-out trip to an orchard. We met the Murphy-Aubin clan at an “apple forest” near Oka and had an absolutely fabulous morning. The weather was glorious, the company was excellent, the apples were delicious, and the kids had a great time running around, up and down ladders, in and out of branches so laden with apples that they bent to touch the grass below. It was spectacular. I ate more apples in one day than I have over the past year, and every single one of them was indescribably delicious. We now have twenty pounds of apples. It was a lovely way to celebrate the first day of fall, although one day early.

Back home we napped, and then the boys took me to my group cello lesson, which was great fun. While I was there they did the groceries, then they picked me up and brought me home again. We had sausages and eggs for dinner, I called my mum to chat, and went to bed. I slept poorly again, though, and only got about four hours, which made Monday kind of hard.

The lack of sleep wasn’t the only thing making Monday hard. I opened my latest freelance assignment to find a 172,000-word manuscript presented in a font composed entirely of capital letters. (I am serious. The author screamed this novel. All five hundred pages of it.) Not only that, the classification was wrong; it wasn’t a fantasy novel, but religious fiction, which isn’t one of the areas I work in. After calming down I debated sending it back, but figured no, I would just be focused and ruthless like I’m supposed to be. I tend to give a lot more time to these evaluations than I ought to, and I need to learn how to be more precise and efficient. This is as good a place as any to begin. And I began by changing the damn font to Times New Roman and putting a big note on the front of the evaluation saying that in order to be read and evaluated the font had to be reformatted, and all page references were according to the new pagination. (I am still incandescent about it.)

Last night we had a Harvest ritual, focusing on celebrating our achievements over the past year. B brought a small bottle of ice cider, and we used our horn for the first time (although we offered the horn to the gods, ancestors, and spirits and used small glasses for ourselves, as most of us had colds). I am really enjoying how our coven is exploring a different way of celebrating, rather than using standard Wiccan format. We’ve chosen to explore the Germanic aspects of our tradition and heritage, and we’re finding that the philosophies reflect our goals and directions very well.

Today I finish up the evaluation, and if I have time, I may prep some more fibre to spin, or I may crack open the black roving I got with the wheel, or even try some of the silky BFL I have left over from spindling.

Weekend Roundup, Labour Day Edition

As it has been many many months since my hair was cut, I booked an appointment for Saturday morning at 8:30, and an appointment for the boy at his ‘haircut store’ (his term, not mine) for an hour later. My stylist moved salons, so this was my first trip to the new location. It’s closer, it’s more posh.. and also more expensive. Still, I’ll pay it gladly to keep working with a stylist who doesn’t condescend to me and who actually does what I ask her to do. My hair is now even shorter than it was at its shortest last year. Heh.

There was a Tim Horton’s two doors down from the new salon, so the boy and HRH headed there for a treat while I got my hair cut, then we moved on to the boy’s appointment about five minutes away. The boy loves getting his hair cut, so that wasn’t a problem, either. Then we wandered to the bookstore, where the boy found a Transformers collector’s guide that we told him to save up for, because it was fifteen dollars and he had already chosen an early reader book to buy. He kept insisting that he had the money, and we kept telling him that he didn’t, and that lots of coins in his money box did not necessarily translate to a large total sum of money, especially when they were mostly nickels and pennies. He was not pleased with this, to put it mildly, which necessitated his removal to the sidewalk outside the store while I paid for our books. I was apologized to when I emerged from the shop. We then stopped at our local Best Buy to pick up a birthday gift certificate for HRH’s dad, where the boy found a Wii terminal that was demoing the swordplay game from the Wii Sports Resort kit and proceeded to do a creditable job for a four year old player while giggling madly. While he did I checked out the webcams (no luck), and the cases for iPod Touch (finally, win!). We coaxed the boy away from the Wii and took a quick turn through the two video game shops for a secondhand copy of Sports Resort, but again, no luck. We’ll put it on the list of things to surprise him with at Yule.

Sunday morning we joined Ceri, Scott, and Ceri’s parents for brunch. We haven’t seen Aubrey and Carmel in eight years (almost exactly, as it was for Ceri and Scott’s wedding!). It was lovely to spend time with them again. The boy thought them very fine as well, and gave them huge hugs and kisses when we left. He spent lots of time digging through an old box of Lego and action figures that Scott had unearthed, and playing on the play structure in the backyard. Brunch was delicious. After the boy’s nap we headed to the south shore for HRH’s dad’s birthday dinner, which was also wonderful. We had a lovely time relaxing in the backyard, and then indulging in a huge pile of barbecued ribs. There was no traffic on the bridge, which was surprising because there had been several warnings about closures, which didn’t seem to be closed after all either there or back. And then when we turned onto the street before ours we saw emergency vehicles, and as we turned onto our own street we saw that one of the duplexes in the building across and one over from ours had burned out during the three hours we were gone. HRH and I were a bit freaked out for the next couple of hours. The shock of coming home and seeing it so drastically changed was bad, but being here while it was happening would have been worse. Our next-door neighbour told us that there was so much smoke it was like night-time. Somewhat reassuringly, the flat above the one that burnt and the ones beside it were relatively undamaged, if one discounts the hole the firefighters had to punch in the floor and roof of the flat above to vent the smoke. Good construction.

Monday we’d left blissfully unscheduled and open. Good thing, too, because my back was so bad by that point that I was pretty much bed-bound. We went out late morning to the pharmacy to buy tiger balm (ours has gone AWOL) and lotion and such things, and we discovered that tiger balm now comes in a lotion form dispensed from a pump. It’s heavenly. I spent much of the day reading or asleep thanks to the muscle relaxants I was taking. I was able to get up and do a third round of tomato canning mid-afternoon, and then made a really nice spaghetti sauce for dinner.

Over the weekend I also managed to reknit all the stuff I’d frogged on my short-sleeved sweater, which makes me very happy. The boy asked if he could help me last night and was upset when I asked him not to, so I got out the size 11 needles and a ball of rainbow yarn, and cast ten stitches on for him to knit. At the moment we’re at the ‘Mama holds her hands over his hands’ stage, but he is very enthusiastic about wrapping the yarn over the RH needle to make the new stitch. He has decided that he is knitting a scarf for his teacher (first it was a hat “because hers is getting very old”, but I suggested the easier scarf instead and he took the suggestion readily). I also managed to read three books over the long weekend. Amazing what being stuck in one place can do for sedentary pastimes. The weather over the weekend was lovely, too; clear, not too hot, nice and cool in the mornings.

Today I’ve been very, very careful. Sudden movement is bad, as is twisty side-to-side motion. If I sit down and stand up very slowly and remember not to turn while I’m doing it, I can get around. I proofed, polished, and handed in the freelance project I’d pretty much completed on Friday this morning.

And… I just got a call to tell me that orchestra is beginning tomorrow night! Which means I have to scramble for my augmented dues, about which I’d entirely forgotten. There’s a silver lining to my spinning wheel being delayed; I have extra money in the bank.

Weekend Roundup, In Which There Is A Visit To The Godforsaken Howling Wilderness

Wonderful, wonderful weekend.

Friday the boy and I had our special day out together. We visited the Melange Magique for incense, and the boy played with the resident cat Tequila and chattered away to Sam and Debra when she arrived. From there we went to Ariadne Knits to visit with Mary Louise and her ten-month old son Henry, and to inquire about the status of my wheel order. She tracked down my order for me and discovered that the model of wheel had been backordered at the CDN warehouse for a month. The order was closed on Friday morning, so it’s either on a truck or will be on one as of Monday, so I figure a week to two weeks at most for my wheel. I picked up a lovely skein of Koigu Painter’s Palette Premium Merino fingering weight in soft variegated greens with which to knit a lace scarf. I will lick my hatred of fingering weight and lace in one simple yet elegant scarf for my fall jacket! We somehow spent an hour there, the boys interacting with one another and the store spinning wheel (the boy spent a lot of time turning it via the footman, and told a client who came in that he was spinning yarn for her to buy). Then it was home for lunch and rest, and then to the local movie theatre to see the new Miyazaki film Ponyo. It was very sweet, and the feel struck me as being a cross between My Neighbour Totoro with the magic of Spirited Away, and a dash of the humans-and-Nature-in-balance thing from Princess Mononoke. Excellent voice acting, truly stunning art (a lot of it takes place underwater or involves sea creatures), and a lovely score. The boy got very excited when he saw the Studio Ghibli logo on the big screen, as it’s a sketch of Totoro. Also: Astro Boy trailer! Woo! And Toy Story and Toy Story 2 coming out as a 3D double bill this fall!

Saturday morning the boy woke up at five. I sent him back to bed where he stayed very obediently till about six-twenty, but he didn’t go back to sleep. Then an hour or so later he experienced digestive upset, which was no fun at all for the poor kid. HRH was gloomy and predicted canceling our long-planned trip out to the Fearsranch to spend the day with Fearsclave and his lovely wife Carolyn, but I was stubborn. We’d already reduced the trip from an overnight to a day trip, and I wasn’t losing the single day. I bargained for leaving an hour later, and all was fine by then. We arrived in Alexandria at eleven-thirty on the dot and the fun began. The boy romped with Jack the dog and crawled after cats, then pulled books on trains off the shelf and brought them out to the swing on the back deck to share with Carolyn while the gentlemen hacked away at the threateningly overgrown tomato patch. There was a late lunch of corn on the cob, Greek salad, and homemade whole-wheat bread. We even had dessert first, a delicious lemon-blueberry-vanilla cake with vanilla glaze and strawberries on top. After lunch we wandered next door to the abode of Fearsclave’s parental units to coo over Bonnie’s new-to-her 30″ white ash Saxony Schacht-Reeves spinning wheel, and they left me there, spinning piles of BFL fibre that Bonnie just kept cheerfully handing to me. The slowest ratio on the Schacht-Reeves is 14:1; the fastest on my forthcoming wheel is 10.5:1! She also showed off her bouquet of spindles, which were lovely, and her fibre stash.

Dinner was a wild turkey, slow-roasted at a low temperature with lots of liquid to counter the leanness, potatoes and beans form the garden, and a Caesar salad. I whipped up some sage and onion gravy for the turkey and baked a pecan pie for dessert, and everything was delicious. Unsurprisingly, the wild turkey had a different texture and taste from the supermarket kind. The only oops was that we whipped the cream for the pie into butter. Heh. Around five o’clock the boy was a bit punchy so we asked if we could put a movie on for him, and wonder of wonders they had Kiki’s Delivery Service on DVD, which we haven’t seen in ages because our VHS player finally died. We paused it so we could all gather for dinner around seven, through which he was slightly drunk on sun and exercise and a missed nap, putting his arms around people and leaning his cheek against theirs, professing his love, and saying, “I like these people. These are nice people, Mama.” He went back inside to finish watching his film while the rest of us had tea and dessert, and we left with great reluctance around eight-thirty. The boy was fast asleep before we got to the end of the road. (Apparently we just missed t! and Jan on their way home from Tal’s housewarming party, which was a shame.) I was thoroughly pleased by the boy’s behaviour: he was polite, thoughtful, exuberant, and a very good boy in general. There were a couple of hiccoughs, such as his inability to remember that we told him (over and over) not to pick George the very old cat up, but George didn’t seem to mind, thank goodness; and when we were leaving Carolyn gave him her copy of The Jungle Book on DVD, and he was so tired that he held it and said, “But I don’t need this.” We had a whispered discussion about how when someone offered a gift we accepted it gracefully with thanks, and there was eventually a mumbled thank you. (All was well the next day when he saw it on the table and bounced up to it, saying, “I need to watch this today! It’s my new movie!”) He was very taken with all the adults who wandered in and out through the day. All in all, we had a wonderful time, and we didn’t want it to end. As we brought him out to the car the boy said, “I don’t want to go home. Can’t we stay here?” As his resistance to the idea of an overnight had been one of the deciding factors in making it a day trip instead, the whole-hearted about-face was satisfying. (The other reason was Monday was the first day of school for both the boy and HRH, so a full day at home before it seemed like a good plan. And it was.)

Sunday was our at-home/errand day. HRH picked up new shoes, and we went to the hardware store to pick up stain for the forthcoming wheel, new work gloves for the boy and I, and a belt pouch for HRH’s work essentials. The boys washed the car while I chatted with my mother, and that afternoon we did garden work, liberating a good two dozen full-sized potatoes and about six dozen tomatoes. I dashed out to pick up new jars for canning (because if one is canning, one needs jars, something I’d completely forgotten about) and to have a cup of tea with Ceri, then came back to start the process. In the past I’ve had horrible luck peeling tomatoes, even with the boiling water/ice water dip, but yesterday it worked like a charm. I suspect I’ve just not boiled them long enough is the past. I was quite disappointed that so many fresh tomatoes only yielded me four 500ml and one 250 ml jars of canned, but that’s what you get when you cut up things with lots of juice and seeds, I suppose. (Note to self for the future: Don’t start boiling the water for sealing the jars till you’re almost done ladling the stuff into the jars. Also, try making crushed tomatoes instead of doing a cold pack.) We were going to have steak with garden potatoes and carrots, but the steaks I’d bought had gone bad, so we defaulted to soft tacos.

Okay, there. That was the weekend. Lovely and relaxing. And really nice weather during the days, too, with rain at night.