A tribute to my mother!

My busiest work week of the year is behind me.  I'm tired, but not nearly as tired as I would be had my mom not cleared her own full schedule to spend over a week with us, lending her arms, hands, heart and ears to our family!  THANK YOU!  Today is my first day "on my own" in over a week and I am feeling more and more grateful by the hour.  The piles of dishes by the sink are only one very tangible reminder of her absence.  Every time we are together it is confirmed for me again what a good team we make in the kitchen. There is really no one else (Jason and I make a good team but it's different) who can foresee exactly what to do to be the most helpful without us really even needing to communicate about it.  It feels pretty seamless to be working side by side - almost like there are two of me, but much more enjoyable than if there were!!  We didn't see much of each other all week as I headed off to work before 5 a.m. most days and arrived home after putting in 12-15 hours. But yesterday we got to savor a full day together - with a walk together in the morning and a game together in the evening and lots of canning and conversing in the middle.

There were a lot of things that just wouldn't have gotten done this week had Mom not been with us or I would have been up even later than I was and been more sleep deprived than I am.  Here are just a sampling of the things Mom helped us with over the course of the week (it's worth noting in part because it involves one new experiment): making salsa, canning tomato paste, canning beans, drying tomatoes, drying squash, freezing kale, and making our own home dried minced onion. I'm pretty excited about that last one!  Besides all those things, and many more, she spent lots of quality time with the girls - reading stories, playing games, going for walks, going for a little excursion to town, offering hugs and cuddles, braiding hair, feeding them and, of course, offering listening ears to Alida's constant chatter!  That has not let up at all...

It meant so much to me to leave home knowing that the day would go well for Jason and the girls.  It's not that they would not have been "ok" without me.  We would have survived the week but it is doubtful we would have thrived!

I've found myself thinking about those folks out there in the world who work 60+ hours/week on a regular basis.  There are probably many of them and they must be made of different stuff than me.  When I was at the office this week, I was fine.  I was actually energized by much of my work this past week.  After corresponding with 30 plus new students for a few months, I got to meet them!  And I spent the good part of 3 days with an incredible group of people from all over the world; from Iraq, Pakistan, Iran, South Korea, Peru. China, Congo, United States...  New student orientation is the culmination of a lot of the work I do over the summer so there is a lot of satisfaction in seeing it come together.  I would go as far as to say that I was having fun a lot of my time at the office this week.

Then I would get home, and I would more or less crash!  I would go outside to pick raspberries or tea or take out the compost and feel like I was in a fog.  It was a rather disorienting feeling and one I'd rather not experience on a regular basis.  I just felt disconnected from the place and the people that I love the very most. It helped to know that the week would come to an end and I would go back to working 3 semi-long days/week rather than 5 incredibly long days/week.  But I felt sad thinking that there may be a lot of people working crazy long hours just to get by or because they feel compelled to do so as a way of "succeeding."  Maybe some people actually choose it.  Maybe it works for some people.  For me, the relief I felt coming home Friday evening was palpable.  I would not get in a vehicle again until Monday morning!  I have felt very much like myself this weekend and it has been lovely.  I feel like I've been soaking up my family's presence too - I find myself just looking at our girls and marveling at who they are and who they are becoming.  I feel grateful for all Jason did this week as well to keep things going smoothly on the home front and have felt lots of surges of love and affection of late when I think about our 15+ year partnership.

And now it's Sunday afternoon and the work week is fast approaching.  I'll include a few more pictures here of the last number of days and the fruits of our labors.  While I learned in Maine last year that the call of the loon is right up there among my favorite sounds, it has not topped the sound of a canning jar sealing as it cools on the counter!

Beans, pickles, tomato juice and salsa ready to be washed off, labeled and stored in the root cellar.

I don't know how many more afternoon naps we'll enjoy, or how many more times Alida will nurse to sleep.  So I'll savor them while they last and assume there will be fewer blog pots when they end.

This is what I likely won't get to until another day - thankfully the tomatoes would like a few more days to ripen.  I love chopping, but do come to a point of wanting a night of sleep before I pick up a knife again!

Yes, just a little proud of this one - a home dried squash chip with fresh salsa on it...

Just noting how much I am enjoying canning outside - not that this August has been very hot, but keeping the humidity outside has been a big plus.

Home grown cantaloupe with ice cream in the middle. It is very handy to not have many dishes at the end of a nighttime snack. :)

The pantry is filling with jars of dried things - here's squash, onions, tomatoes and corn.

Those beans are still waiting for me. In the background Alida is grinding corn that I blended until it was much finer and then used as the thickener in my salsa sauce.  The taste is great; we'll see what we think after it is canned.  If we can get away without buying cornstarch, our salsa will be super cheap for us to produce with pretty much just spices that we didn't grow ourselves.

And, finally, deviled eggs with Jason's home grown/ground paprika. Very fun and tasty too!