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My family gave me the sweetest Mother’s Day gift.
A week “off”!
A full 7 days of no cleaning, no cooking, no grocery shopping, no taking care of them. They want to do everything for me. Hmmh. Well, let’s talk about this, shall we….
First, I can’t believe how unbelievably generous these darlings are. The Mister gets up at 4:30 every morning to go to work and works hard all day. So watching he and our daughter cook dinner, clean the kitchen and do laundry at the same time was actually a bit painful. Plus, I like taking care of them! I don’t have dinner on the table at the same time every night because I have to, but because I like to. In this house I clean the floors daily, dust every other day, shop every other day. And I like being busy, so sitting knowing the floors need cleaning, the lawn REALLY needs mowing and my plans for this week were to clean out the pantry and all the kitchen cabinets has thus far, been near torture. (it’s not as spotless here as that may make it sound, really.) But I made a promise. And I just love that they would even want to do this. So here I sit.
Okay, not really. I must confess.
I went shopping on my way home. I scouted for dirty dishes (and embarrassingly found them) in the bedrooms. I weeded the gardens some. But that’s not really house work, is it? I swept the floors yesterday and am having a very hard time refraining today. And I did wash some dishes. BUT, only because I had dirtied them!
So, to keep my promise I found a whole bunch of other things to keep me busy after returning home from training. I had to get out or surely would have started dusting. So I went foraging.
I found a slew of dandelions for us to talk about later this week. Here are just a few.
And the mustard spinach growing in the lawn needed to be picked before the mower got a hold of it.
Then I decided to venture in the woods across from the house. I didn’t find much more than a bunch of mosquitoes. And a ton of fairly old bottles and cans. Who ever logged these woods many years ago (or the teenagers who once lived here) sure liked Budweiser.
How old do you think this Pepsi bottle is? It’s plastic, but still been here awhile.
And this iced tea can.
I did find some really great spots deep in the woods. At one point, there I was carrying my basket with the hood of my sweatshirt up to help fight off the mosquitoes. I found myself singing…
“Hey there Little Red Ridinghood. You sure are looking good. You’re everything that a big bad wolf could want.”
Do you remember that song? Well, about the third time through I realized I was in the exact location where the pack of coyote who live in these woods were yelling at me just two nights ago. I love to run in and wander the woods alone. The song was strangely fun and creepy.
The beasts will accompany my future foraging expeditions, per the Mister. I’m married to a Marine, grew up in the woods and have no trouble taking care of myself. Nor do I have a poor sense of direction, but I was stalked by a big cat in these woods once too. I mean a BIG cat. Mountain Lion. They “say” we don’t have them in the Shire, but that’s nonsense. I watched it run past me chasing a dear. A short time later I heard something following me. I turned just in time to see it behind me. I knew it was there all the way home. I’m frequently reminded we have 300 pounds of dog for a reason. But it’s much nicer alone.
I wandered for about an hour and then ventured back home. Started some vanilla extract…
And sourdough starter.
Made two new batches of sauerkraut.
Look at this line up!
Now I have a ton of writing to do and you have a sneak peak at a few of the things to come. But I fear I may have to break my promise before the week is over. I can only keep this up for so long. Or perhaps I should add a couple more morning clients?
I hope your week has started as sweetly as mine!
Live Well!
~S
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