More Things that Keep Me from Posting

... or "Another Typical Weekend"

On my way home from work on Friday, I called Sam, just as I do most Fridays. Friday night is when I give Sam an option of what he would like to do for dinner. Actually, I give him options just about every night, but every other night, the options involve food I already have at home - and it usually involves leftovers for one or more of the options.

On Fridays though, it’s his choice and his choice usually means going to one of the grocery stores to buy something along the lines of chicken strips and potato wedges. This is a tradition that started long ago when his brother and sisters were little. It gave me a night off from having to think of an idea for dinner and it gave them a night off from having to eat one of my meals.

So we went to the grocery store and after dinner, we prepared to make apple butter.

We still have a ton of apples left over from when we went apple picking and Sam had wanted to make apple butter. This was fine, but t apple butter takes a while to cook, eleven hours, in fact - at least, it does the way we do it. So Sam and I weighed out the right amount of apples. I peeled them and Sam chopped them and then we put them in the crock pot where, along with the other ingredients, they simmered overnight.

Saturday morning, I got Sam his breakfast and while Sam ate, I whisked out the apple butter. When the apple butter had cooled, I put some of it in a container so Sam could have some later. The rest went into some freezer bags, which Sam had labeled for me, and then I somehow managed to fit them into the freezer.

Next, it was time to help Sam with his checkbook. His bank statement had come earlier in the week, and so had another paycheck, so we worked on balancing his checkbook and getting his bank information together. While Sam worked on the math, I entered his information where I needed to enter it, for the ever present SSI issues. When we finished, we worked on making our usual grocery lists - one for him and one for me.

We knew we were going to be doing another cooking project this weekend so, along with checking out the status of our usual necessities, we went through the selected recipe, finding the ingredients we already had and adding those we didn't have to our grocery list. Then, it was off to the bank and off to the grocery store.

Back at home, Sam ate lunch and I worked on cleaning an area of our overstuffed basement. This ordeal consisted of shoveling out several buckets of damp dirt (don’t ask), getting it to the point where I could remove an old, decaying pallet (thanks Helaina) which had sat under several temporarily relocated tubs, each containing God knows what.

Helaina also helped me carry away an old butcher block table. This is a table I had made, I’m guessing, maybe forty years ago and it has sat in my basement, on that broken pallet, for close to thirty years. With that gone and the broken pallet gone, and the floor shoveled off and swept up, I put some patio blocks down on our sometimes damp floor, and then re-stacked the aforementioned mystery tubs, back on top.

Saturday night consisted of me doing another load of laundry, because life wouldn’t be complete without me doing more laundry. It also consisted of me trying to keep my back from locking up, a goal I worked on pretty much right up until bedtime.

Sunday was another crock-pot day - and also, a baking day - perfect for a well-rested back. Sam and I worked on our chicken crock pot recipe and, once that was underway and before we started any more baking, we went onto going over his upcoming schedule.

Sam’s schedule is tied into the school calendar. Earlier in the week, I had printed out a copy of this calendar and my goal was to go through it with Sam, highlight the days when he didn’t have to go to work,and then have him put those days onto his calendar on the computer.

We made it as far as highlighting the days that he didn't have to go to work, but we didn’t get to entering them onto his calendar. Neither of us had the concentration or the desire to do this. We’ll leave this as "Step Two" for some other day.

Instead, it was back to the baking.

Somewhere between Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, we decided that, even after making the apple butter, we still had a ton (literally) of apples left - and maybe we could come up with another recipe involving apples. In my unwinding the night before, I had found a recipe for some apple bread.

While this recipe seemed to be fairly unexciting, it seemed like it would go perfectly with the freshly made apple butter. Plus, it had the added advantage of using up another four apples, leaving only about three thousand more to use up.

Since this was a new recipe and of questionable quality, Sam and I decided that, instead of tripling the batch, like usual, we would instead only double the batch - a fairly radical call on our part. Once again, I peeled apples and Sam chopped them - and together we did the math, doubling each of the called-for ingredients in the recipe.

We measured and mixed, then poured into greased pans - and with it done and in the oven, I got Sam some lunch.

After lunch and after the bread was out of the oven (which, by the way, looked better than I had expected) Sam and I decided to head back to the grocery store. We had to return some bad produce bought the day before, and since we were going anyway, we decided to buy a few of the items we were now low on - thanks to our recent baking. This gave us both a well needed opportunity to get out of the house, and gave Sam a bonus visit with the Sample People at the grocery store (not to mention, the bonus samples).

Back home once more, this time for the final time this weekend, Sam and I did the prerequisite fiddling with the chicken, which was still cooking away in the crock pot and, other than some frustrating and ultimately unsuccessful attempts to instigate some badly needed cleaning (another thing to not ask me about), this was pretty much "it" until dinner - which was now less than an hour away.

After dinner and after the dishes, I dug out the election booklet. We have an election coming up in early November (though actually, we can now go in to vote before then). I had told Sam earlier in the week that I would go through the ballot with him, and I would try to explain the various questions (as best I could) and we could look at who was running for which offices, and he could think about who he might want to vote for. But by this time, it was late. It was time for showers. And after showers, it was almost time for bed.

When Sam came down from his shower, he asked about going through the booklet, concerned if we would be late for the election. I told him we had well over a week to go and promised that we would go through it together tomorrow night. I told him we would aim closer to dinner time - when we both had a little more time and a little more focus. And I promised that, if nothing else came up, we would plan on going to vote together, after I got home on Thursday.

Satisfied, Sam spent the remaining fifteen minutes before bedtime, watching cartoons on the computer. And I, like usual, sat on the couch, and tried to stay awake.