Snapshots: Sans Flowers

I'm just going to admit right up front that I have no photos of flowers in this post.

I know. It's shocking.

I actually have no flowers in my house right now, and did not get anything together for the altar at church this week. There are several reasons for this.

First, we always have school on the Friday after Labor Day, which means an uncharacteristic two-day weekend for us instead of our usual three-day weekend. And that means less time in general to do smaller things like flowers.

Also, three out of the six members of the family left yesterday for two different short trips. One son left at 4 a.m. for a day trip. A. and another son left in the middle of the day for an overnight trip. Both of these events required my involvement to make sure everyone had the appropriate clothing, food, and accoutrements. 

And last, I have been spending six or seven hours in the kitchen every day processing all the food that has come into my house in the past week (more on that Tuesday). 

It's been busy, I am tired, and I just didn't get any flowers gathered and arranged.

I still have plants in the house, though!

My indestructible pothos have finally gotten long enough that they were interfering with the kids' reading spots on the couch, so I put a hook there in the center and looped them up out of the way.

A. continued his bathroom heroics by tearing out our bathroom, which was in almost as bad a shape as the kids' bathroom.

This was where the leaking tub was. It will be a shower stall eventually. A. is building this whole thing himself from bricks and concrete or something, so I have no idea what it will look like in the end.

I don't really eat sandwiches regularly, but I do love BLTs. Only with homegrown tomatoes, though. That's why I always have one celebratory BLT in the height of tomato season. This year, that was last week.

Much-anticipated BLT on a bunny plate.

A couple of months ago, Poppy was suddenly taken with the idea of making a pinata. I don't know where she saw or heard about this, but she really wanted to do the paper mache thing. I didn't have any great objections to it--it's easy, if messy--but was somewhat stymied by the lack of newspapers to be had.

It never really occurred to me that the slow death spiral of printed newspapers is depriving a generation of children of paper mache, but it certainly does make it harder. 

However! While we were on the way to my sister's house in Colorado, we stopped at one of the big Colorado rest stops, and there found a stand with one of those free small newspapers that lists things to do in an area. I figured it would be okay to take a couple for paper mache purposes, so that is what we did.

Those papers have been kicking around the house for two months now, but yesterday Poppy again brought up the pinata thing. As it was a gray day outside and I was just working in the kitchen, I figured it was as good a day as any to do the paper mache.

Accordingly, I blew up a balloon, set her up to contain the mess as much as possible, and let her have at it.

It was fun at first, but she was tired of it by the third layer for sure.

I'm not sure she was too diligent about smoothing the excess paste off the strips of paper. It was so wet that when we hung it up to dry, it was dripping a little. I hope it dries within a few days, though, because Poppy's best friend has a birthday this week, and the plan is to ask their teacher if they can hang the pinata up in the cafeteria and whack it on her birthday. 

Which means, I guess, that I need to get some candy for the inside. Kind of funny to say it, but I'm not entirely sure if I can. I don't want to drive two hundred miles to the nearest store to fill a pinata. I hope the guy who owns the little store in the village is open this week and has something I could use. 

Or is there something I could make or bake to put in there that wouldn't break into a million pieces? Thoughts?

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Snapshots: Come Walk With Me

We haven't checked in on the horses in awhile. I wonder what they're up to . . .

Grazing, as usual.

This is what it looks like in our almost-ghost village.

Dead trucks.

Dead roads to nowhere.

When I was in town on Friday, I parked next to a truck almost as old as the one in the above photo, although this one was still on the road.

Barely. How does one do this to a truck?

It's green-chile-roasting season in New Mexico. You can buy giant sacks of green chiles in the grocery store and bring them right out to the parking lot to be roasted.

The chile-roasting area at this store is cordoned off by upside-down shopping carts.

I didn't do anything too interesting with flowers this week. I'm pretty much in "all sunflowers, all the time" right now. This is what I did for the altar today.

More apricot branches, more sunflowers, and kochia seed heads.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Snapshots: Toilet Legends

A couple of random kitchen shots this week . . .

When I make my collard salads, I put just a little bit of maple syrup in the dressing. The collards can use the sweetness. Last time I was preparing the collards, there was just a tiny bit of maple syrup in the syrup pourer*, so I just took off the top and was very pleased to find that the upended pourer fit perfectly in the salad dressing jar to drain out.

Drip drip.

The quantities of food I purchase these days come in very large containers. These would be awkward to cook with regularly, so I spend a lot of time decanting from giant containers into more-manageable ones. As I did with the molasses I got this week.

Between gingersnaps and homemade barbecue sauce, I go through more molasses than your average person.

I took a picture of my cart of groceries this week, just because there weren't very many--I'm anticipating a much bigger stock-up trip to Walmart soon--and I was betting with myself that it would still be more than a hundred dollars.

It was, but mostly because I bought alcohol. Without that, it would have been ninety dollars.

This was right next to the front door of the fancy hotel I stayed in last week.

Correctly identified by the son with me as the Virgin of Guadalupe. That's Juan Diego kneeling.

Having something like that outside a random hotel is so New Mexico.

I purchased a new toilet this week to replace the one in the adults' bathroom. The box was one of the more intriguing things I've seen in awhile.

There's a lot going on here.

The scatalogical motto I can see, but why did a toilet maker name their company after a Roman statesman? Then I looked it up and discovered that Cato is said to have met with an Egyptian king while on the toilet, to convey disrespect. Oooookay.

We don't yet know what a "destroyer flush" is, but I guess we'll see when A. installs the toilet.

And last, flowers!

I used apricot branches in this week's altar arrangement. I felt like the background needed to be darker and more solid to show up better on the altar.

It looks better from farther away, so I think it will work.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

 

* I actually bought one of these maple syrup dispensers like they have at diners. We use maple syrup a lot, and these really are the best and least-messy way to pour it.

Snapshots: Away and Home Again

Because the city I went to this past week is a hot one, the hotels there tend to have better rates in the summer. That is why I reserved a room at a much nicer hotel than I would usually stay at.

It had a particularly spectacular pool, which we could see from our window.

This hutch made me laugh. If they were trying to cultivate an intellectual environment by having books on it, they should have put more than one on each shelf.

Every room had a Keurig coffee machine, so I made my coffee when I got up early and then took it out to the lounge area to drink so as not to disturb the sleeping son. Well, any more than I did running a coffee machine five feet from his bed.

This hotel had actual ceramic coffee mugs, which I enjoyed very much.

I did try to read one of those books that were on the hutch--I no longer remember the title or author, but it was something about a very witty high-society private eye in Palm Beach--but one chapter was enough for me. It was pretty bad.

We stopped to see a friend on our way home the next night and stayed in a small town. Our lodgings there were a rather eccentric sort of bed and breakfast that A. has stayed in before. To get to our room, we had to climb a very steep and very curvy iron staircase outside.

Definitely not ADA compliant.

Our room was quite spacious and nice, although it's very clear from the decorative choices that an older man runs this place.

Lots of red curtains, and very unfortunate polyester bedding.

My coffee the next morning was courtesy of the bakery that's just a block away.

It's a Mexican bakery, so I also got an empanada de manzana--an apple turnover--for the boy who was still sleeping.

My walk back to the lodge took me on a street right next to the acequias that make this place so green.

Acequias are systems of water channels that were brought to New Mexico via the Spanish, who in turn learned the methods from the Moors. They are a very old method of irrigation here, and are (obviously) still used.

The drive home was a few hundred miles of this.

New Mexico really is a startlingly rural state.

Waiting for me at home were the many apples A. picked from Rafael's tree the day before I left.

Five gallons of apple slices in the freezer so far. Next up, canning.

Of course I must share with you this week's flowers.

This was actually last week's altar arrangement. All the flowers were pulled from my fair entry.

Straight sunflowers on the table.

A. brought me some down-the-hill flowers mid-week. It was almost bedtime when he got home, so I just stuck them in a jar on the table until I could get to them the next day.

Very dramatic, but a wee bit large for a table we eat at.

A more practical table arrangement.

Later supplemented by some flowers A. found in the pasture while he was chaperoning a horse ride.

And last, this week's altar arrangement, waiting for the altar.

A flower tower.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Snapshots: Home Improvement

Poppy likes to go through my shoes and was delighted to find that I still have the white sandals I wore when I got married 22 years ago. She informed me I should wear them on our anniversary. That was on a Saturday, however, and I do not generally go around in high heels at home. I told her I would wear them to church the next day, though. 

This is the main aisle at our church. It is bare wood. All of my heels are SO LOUD when I have to walk up and down this aisle, which is several times when I'm mayordoma. 

A. finished installing the tub and shower in the children's bathroom. The tub juuuust barely fit.

Like, to the centimeter.

A. has spent his entire life hating cheap bathroom fixtures, so instead of buying the shower plumbing, faucets, etc., at a local store, he ordered this crazy copper set-up from Morocco. Directly from a Moroccan company, I mean.

It came in an actual wooden box they built for it, with Fragile stamped on it. It was the modern equivalent of A Christmas Story. 

A. actually used a hammer to open this.

The end result is I'm sure not what anyone is going to expect in our old trailer in the middle of nowhere.

Welcome to the Moroccan baths.

A. made sure to mount the shower head so there is plenty of clearance for the over-six-foot-tall people in our house, which at the moment stands at two of them but will probably include all the males in our household in a few years.

The family is delighted with their extra-deep tub and extra-high shower. I am delighted that it no longer smells like a swamp when anyone bathes. Satisfaction all around.

It has also proved useful as our laundry facility for a couple of weeks while my washing machine is gone for repairs.

Poppy was delighted to stomp clothes for me. I was delighted to let her.

For my part, after we made the younger boys' bunk bed into two twin beds, I got them each a clothes rack to take the place of the closet they do not have in their bedroom. The box for each of these racks, which I lifted out of the outer box with one hand, was pretty funny.

"Super Heavy" and TEAM LIFT. Okay, then.

Despite the impressive feat of lifting this all by myself, I was more impressed that I actually assembled them myself.

Flat-pack furniture and I don't really get along.

Check out this impressive bug I found on my collard greens.

Yikes.

The son who is on the FFA entomology team identified this for me as an assassin bug. I can only hope it's assassinating the grasshoppers.

Lastly, this week's flowers, courtesy of sunflower season and A. going down the hill to do some rock work*.

Table flowers.

And the church (and bookcase) flowers.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

* The younger boys went with him and were holding all the flowers in the truck on the way home. They informed me that ants were on the flowers and they kept getting bitten on the drive home. This is how I know they love me.

Snapshots: Twenty-two Years

A. and I celebrated 22 years of marriage yesterday.

I always put our wedding album out on the table for the kids to look at. And they always remark how young we look in the photos.

I made a very pink vodka slushie for us to toast with. It's pink because of currant juice made with the wild currants the kids picked for me.

Poppy has been reading the Ramona Quimby books and, like every child who reads those books, she had to try making tin-can stilts like Ramona's.

She made them herself and got quite accomplished walking on them after some practice.

Washing beloved stuffed animals always results in a rather concerning clothesline.

Sheep and Jeremy the Rat, hung out to dry.

I finally replaced my speedy purple shoes that were falling apart.

Not purple. Not all that speedy, either, I guess.

My biggest accomplishment this week was completely emptying the younger boys' room and rearranging it when we cut their bunk bed into twin beds.

There was so. much. stuff. in this room.

Edited to add: I forgot the flowers this week! Shocking. You can see what is on the table right now in that photo above with the anniversary drinks. And then last week, I added a couple more sunflowers to the altar flowers before bringing them to church.

This week's altar flowers were very similar, except I bunched the sunflowers together a little more.

It's definitely sunflower season.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.