Elizabeth’s Journal

At Loose Ends

After dropping Jonathan off at his holiday camp this morning, I took Mom and Dad out to the airport for their return to the farm. It’s lovely weather here—no clouds, started off at freezing this morning but it’s at 54 now and supposed to get up to the mid-sixties by the afternoon—but at the farm it’s 44 and feels like 35, according to The Weather Channel, wind gusts 23-28 mph, and lows next week there are supposed to hit 6 and 2 degrees. Yes, that’s Fahrenheit. BRRRRR!

Now that there’s no one around, I have the feeling of not knowing what to do, even though there are thousands of things that *should* be done. Hence I’m just kind of hanging out, doing laundry, helping my brother-in-law unzip a file for the first time, etc. I guess I need a couple of days to do nothing! Mom was a huge help to me the last few days—I spent one entire day cleaning out Jonathan’s room, including under his bed and his closet, and also sorting through the toys we kept in our bathroom for him to play with while we showered. It was a tiring day and not really that much fun, although he does have loads of room now in his bedroom; the rocking chair is now by the piano in the front room. Then the next day I had to get all the Christmas decorations put away, which was another big job. Luckily Mom made dinner both nights (cold boiled shrimp, fresh homemade rolls, broccoli stir-fry one night, and last night we had roast beef & potatoes with corn and the fresh dill bread I’d made). It’s so nice having dinner fixed for you in your own home! And not having to even give it a second thought meant I could focus on getting all that stuff packed away. Yay for Moms!

While our friends Jessica & Archie have been out of town with their little Eamon, they kindly loaned me their Kitchen-Aid so I could see if I think I’d really use one enough to warrant the purchase price. My interest in using it is primarily for making bread. I’ve made three loaves now and love it so far, but the real test will come when we see if I still use it after Mom’s gone. Dale for one is quite tickled to have homemade bread and has a hard time stopping himself from eating a whole loaf at once. Yesterday I made a loaf of basic white bread, although I substituted some seven-grain mix for part of the flour, and I also made a loaf of dill bread that was pretty scrumptious. Jonathan likes very much to help—he works all the Kitchen-Aid controls and likes to watch the dough hook kneading the bread.