Today we are looking forward to going to the pumpkin patch (I’ll be looking for your mom, Jillian!), testing our wits in the 11 acre corn maze (it’s a T Rex this year!), and then coming home to decorate our sugar skulls. It will be a fun fall day (even if it is still 90 degrees outside).
This weekend came at the end of two very long weeks, and I was a little behind in the domestic arts – I am pretty sure I made up for it, though, and I think I get extra points for doing all the things below WITHOUT A DISHWASHER. I have learned that I do not have time in my regular life for hand washing dishes – but I don’t have time to get it fixed, especially when I say “Can you give me a time?” and they say “No, we will call you during the day sometime and tell you when we might show up.” What is it with repair men? Can’t they just PLAN?
So here is what I have done, between Friday at 5 PM and now, when we are waiting for the resting hunter to wake, just returned from 2 weeks on Kodiak Island hunting billy goats:
- Sewed the gold and black requisite EGYPT DAY costume for Andra
- Made eggs and toast with sage sausage for the girls for breakfast
- Hand washed dishes
- Sewed the “I can’t wear the Egypt costume out trick or treating!” Bride of the Dead costume out of enough tulle to cover the house, using a groovy black velvet hat I bought visiting Jacki in Russia 20 years ago
- Sewed the patches on Grace’s brownie vest (which is now obsolete but I felt so guilty for never finishing it, that I did it to pack away in her special stuff box).
- Sewed the patches on Grace’s GIRL SCOUT vest, now that she has bridged (I still want to say she “flew up” but that is what Blue Birds do, to become Campfire Girls).
- Sewed repairs to a swimsuit for Andra – now that swim season is over and she will probably be 6 inches taller next year.
- Cleaned the cold pool – how can it still be a little green?
- Made 20 sugar skulls, ready for decoration
- Hand washed dishes
- Made Chicken Artichoke stew
- Hand washed dishes
- Made biscuits from scratch
- Hand washed dishes
- Went to the mall with the girls to shoe and cloak them for the winter (just in case it ever shows up)
- Went for a walk with Grace to break in her new shoes
- Tried to give extra love Phil, who is tired, always let down after a big hunt, and who watched the billy goat he did shoot, the one he has dreamed of for most of his life, slide down a grassy slope, off a cliff and into an inaccessible canyon.
We still have a birthday cake to make for Phil – which should involve more fondant and most certainly more hand washing dishes. It occurs to me that as fun as making sugar skulls, or dinner, or breakfast, or fancy cakes are, my physics teacher Mr. Pack had it right “For every action (fun) there is an equal and opposite REaction (hand washing dishes).
Happy Fall to you and yours – enjoy it, and, for good measure, say a brief thanks for your functioning dishwasher.
mostlyjenine 
Hi there! I am sure you saw my dad (he works the checkout lines), but my mom has to stay away because of her allergies. So jealous, I miss Tucson!
Yea, well I asked the people at the pumpkin launch, and it SO wasn’t them. They looked at me like I was crazy when I said “Are you Jillian’s parents?” The fields were fat with pumpkins, there were some cool new varietals, the corn maze was really cool and we cooled off with a little shaved ice. It was still hot. Tucson misses you too!