My hands sometimes hurt. My right hand, finger bent sideways to type. I can see the skin aging on the backs, the veins sticking out. They are turning into my grandmother’s hands. This is not so bad.

Supper is in the oven. The pouring rain stopped just as suddenly as it started, the orange and red leaves almost neon in the sun, highlighted against the dark cloudy sky. I grabbed my wallet and jogged across the road to the vegetable stand my neighbours run.

No large bags of potatoes this year. They sold really well, there’s not enough left to bag up that large. I took two ten pound bags and two and a half pounds of carrots, rummaged from plastic buckets, brushing the mud off them. Nine dollars please.

Mashed potatoes, carrots and individual meat loaves for supper. I took the time today to think about it, after my brain could obviously not think about work any more and be coherent.

So it’s fall.

Friday they called for a heavy frost overnight. My phone rang and it was my farmer neighbour on the other end. “Hard frost tonight, tomatoes still out in the field so come get all you want, no charge. Bring your tractor.”

Like crazy people we went, a half hour before sunset. We took six huge cloth grocery bags – a few of them those sturdy ones that stand up by themselves. Ron figures we got 90 pounds of tomatoes, most of them green. They overplanted and didn’t cage or support them (lesson learned, they said) so I had to go down some rows on the ridge tops between where the plats were growing flipping over the branches to find the goodies sheltered underneath. And then scrambling to pick the ones that fell off as soon as the branches moved, dodging bad tomatoes on the ground. It didn’t take us any more than twenty minutes to fill our bags. Ron loaded them up in the tractor bucket, and while he lumbered across their field, back over the road and into our yard, Meaghan and I came up the rows of peppers and onions.

We filled our jackets, and carried home as many onions as we could. I think Meaghan’s going to make them an apple pie, because earlier that day we went on a field trip.

Of course, we went apple picking and we came home with a pile of apples. Four 3 pound bags of Cortlands we picked ourselves, and a 20 pound bag of Macintosh for eight dollars. Somewhere between the coming home and the tomato harvest, I took a bag of apples over to our elderly neighbours and caught up on the local news.

See? A circle of kindness. Fall harvest time, neighbours helping each other, supporting one another.

***

In other news: we turned on more breakers and things were fine. Nobody injured themselves with stupid accidents. Work did not get too crazy.

Overall, that makes me suspicious.

It was 43 and a half pounds.

we also picked up a fifty pound bag of butternut squash. Or buttercup? I mix them up, it’s the green ones that look like UFOs. Yes, that is a lot of pie, but the thing maybe a lot of people don’t realize is as long as the squash is kept cool and dry they will keep for most of the winter. Easily through to January.

(and my mom will steal some)

Anyway, the cost of this bounty? $25.

Yeah, you read that right. Twenty five dollars.

And if the frost didn’t kill off too many, I will probably go back and get more because I hate to see them all go to waste. Besides, sauce making is really easy.

(Food mill purchased here.)

We picked berries.

And used them up.

We worked on quilts.

Marking.

And sewing.

And we just plain worked.

I also worked myself into a Not Good state between the berry picking and the heat and the stress and spent a couple days off and on just napping. Or trying to.

But I didn’t take pictures of that.

I put myself down on the list to make my Chinese food spread. At first, I was not sure how well it was received. But hey, it was food for the supper.

I started cooking yesterday shortly after lunch. I made fried rice, sweet and sour chicken balls (with the sauce separate) and won ton soup, which I finished off down at the clubhouse so it wouldn’t be soggy or sloshy to move. Ron helped be bring everything down about 20 minutes beforehand.

Some people were already there, waiting to eat! The tables were already set up – I have no idea when that was done, as nobody let me know. The food tables were already full of food, and piles of more food was in the kitchen.

I’m still in that place where I’m floating around trying to sort my place in the scheme of things around here. some of them I haven’t worked with enough to find a comfortable spot. And I really need to be told what you need me to do. Some of it I can guess, but I can’t read minds very well.

Eventually, Sarah and I started to dive right in as more people showed up and the workload increased. I gravitated towards standing behind the serving tables, helping seniors lift lids off crock pots while trying to hold their plates and utensils. I even directed people to certain foods, and explained what was in each pot. I spent quite a bit of time by the tables, and the ladies who were more comfortable running back and forth to the kitchen,or staying in the kitchen washing dishes, prepping the next batch of food to come out, sorted themselves out that way.

At one point out of the corner of my eye, I noticed two other club member standing in the kitchen doorway, look in my direction and talking.

“What?” I hollered.

“Nothing! We’re talking about you, not to you!” they joked back.

“You gonna tell me or am I gonna hear about it next week at the post office?” I can hand it back just as good.

The crowd died down and I made my way over to the lady who had been talking about me. She immediately said, “We’ve found your calling!” Oh? What’s that?

So now I get to be “out front” and deal with the crowd, since I’m apparently a natural. And then they ran me out of the kitchen.

It must have been good, because we raised one pile of money. I brought home one tray of leftover sweets, and a bunch of my dirty dishes. The chicken balls were a big hit with the kids especially (they look like chicken nuggets), and everyone loved my soup.

It’s wet out there. Sprinkling, wet, muddy, cold. Leaves stuck to the pavement, junipers all yellow-orange when we drove over the back road through the woods. I spoiled myself and got a large tea (1 milk, 2 sugar please) at the Tim Horton’s drive through and saw Sarah walking up to the grocery store. The guy who owns it also own the place where she works. I waited around a bit and didn’t see her again, but after I got home and settled again, she called to tell me the person who was supposed to open misunderstood what time they had to actually get there to open. So she was letting me know she was okay and not stranded.

We went to a meeting for the community club last night. The breakfast we had on last Saturday made almost seven hundred dollars – enough for a tank of oil to heat the place, maybe till Christmas. The other lady who was going to do the craft bazaar can’t so I’m in charge now because I really think we should have it. I hope it works out better than the craft class I held last week. Not one person showed up. Ah well, this time I know I have help (someone’s gonna call some people) and I have a clear plan, and yeah – I have kinda done this before. So I’ll be working my tail off more to prove the point I can do it.

I suggested at this sale (after it was mentioned that last time someone had a table of baked goods and sold mountains of it) that the club should have a baked goods table with items donated by club members. “Ooo, good idea!” a couple of the hard-nosed people said. I’m thinking, “Well yeah, isn’t that pretty standard?” Anyway.

Christmas Craft sale. My neighborhood. November 22nd. I’ll be making signs and putting them up everywhere this week.

Actually, I just thought of something, took a quick break while I ran around the house like a madwoman searching for a phone number that is on the bulletin board at my desk. But! I caught them just in time to get the craft sale put on the local community calendar that comes in the mail and blankets half the county, so *phew*!

(ohcrapthatmeansit’sofficial!)

And we’re making work slow down. No new clients until the end of the year. I officially started turning away new inquiries yesterday. We’ve got a bunch of our own things that have been neglected too long, so we have to work on that, and we have to do some things over the holidays, like visit family. I hope they still recognize me, it’s been a while.

The only up side is that most of my relatives don’t have blogs, so they can’t dis me in public. I should be thankful, yes?

No, really it was, come back!

The guy came early, like I just got back from my walk early, and his truck was a wee bigger than I thought it would be. I got him to leave the extremely large container right where Ron told me to tell him to put it. He kind of had to wrangle the truck a bit.

And then? We noticed he had the lifter part of the truck caught on some overhead wires. Thankfully not connected to anything (I think) but wires nonetheless. So when he asked is he could borrow a shovel or stick or something to move the wires, well of course I said “OF COURSE!” and frantically looked around helplessly.

The guy and I had just finished saying to each other that neither one of us has any caffeine yet that morning either.

So that’s why I got to move the lever on the truck, see, because he was up under the back part that lifts, holding the wire up out of the way, and he couldn’t reach the levers on the side of the truck, so he showed me which one to pull to bring the level back down. All while he stood ther with it coming slowly towards him and both of us watching to make sure the wire got out of the way.

After that I was pretty much awake.

***

Today after my morning walk, I wandered around to look at the dumpster (it has a door) and saw MRS gopher runnign under it. I say MRS gopher as babies have been spotted.

This weekend we’ll be tossing things in a dumpster again, making a ton of nose and pleasing the neighbours. (They love it when we work in the yard – really.)

By short week, I mean I’m not sure where even the last two weeks went. It’s been a blur of work work work. We got our phone fixed, spent some time talking to customer service to get our internet fixed (mostly), and then just tried to play catch-up with whatever else before I fell into bed every night.

Turns out the satellite dish for our internet was tipped and possibly had water in it, which was bad, so the guy moved it and put a new… thing… on it. I’m trying it out for a bit to let him know and he’s testing that part he replaced to see if he really has to charge me for a new one. But the interesting thing he said was with the weather issues we should have called him right away (the installer) and not customer support. They only had ONE record of me calling last August. He got here around 9:30 and left about 12.

Anyway. He was literally just finishing up when I had to call in for a conference call. That went on for an hour and 45 minutes, then I finally had my lunch.

Somewhere in there Emma lost another tooth. It was hanging on bravely and the big tooth was coming in behind it, not directly above. The tooth fairy again forgot to place money under her pillow, but it showed up the next afternoon.

The US holiday slowed my stuff down enough I could catch up a bit work-wise. Intense focusing on one project makes it really hard for me to even remember much of anything else. (and then I have to switch gears and focus on a different project, but that’s work stuff)

And I just drew a blank on what I did yesterday. Work, I bet. And laundry. Oh, and Rosella brought me over a few stems off her peony bush.

I got up early this morning. A woodpecker was on the tree next to my open bedroom window, and we’re waiting for windows to be delivered, so we didn’t know if they’d show up at 8am. Sometimes on my morning walk, I see a couple families of ducks. This morning I saw some Canada geese and their babies, with the mist coming off the water.

Of course I didn’t have my camera.

I did get out to take pictures of the neighbour’s flowers, and this afternoon all the girls and I went down the road and picked a flat of strawberries. That’s twelve of those little wooden baskets they come in. They were charging $1.70 each, but she said I didn’t overfill so she gave me $2 change from my $20. Emma talked the whole entire time, and yes Mom she wore her sunhat. In among the rows of berries were blooming wildflowers, johnnyjump-ups and some other familiar ones I can’t name. the owner said it wasn’t on purpose, but I appreciated it anyway, sitting in the straw. We were there and back within an hour.

I also finished potting my tomatoes I had growing in the unused upstairs bathroom. When I told Rosella I did this, she asked me if we were into hydroponics and maybe we were secretly growing pot.

Ron is working on the front porch and the side porch today, and we just discovered it’s leaking again under the sink.

oh, and my flickr stuff is missing from my sidebar, no idea why. click here for the pretty pictures.

(Edit: I had connection issues posting this, so if half of it shows up in your feed reader… oops. You love me though, right?)

I should tell you right now I am one of those people who do not like anything or anyone touching my neck. I don’t even like tight turtlenecks. I swatted it away, and confused, looked at my hand which was… wet.

Ew.

So I pulled my tshirt away from myself to get a good look on whatever was on my shoulder. I thought maybe a bird had presented me with a gift maybe. Nope.

THERE WAS A BUG ON MY SHIRT.

Not only that, he was LOOKING AT ME. And reaching out with his flailing buggy arm stumps, trying to inch forward.

“GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF ME! OHGODSOMEONEGETHISOFFMENOW! AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!”

Yeah, I kinda freaked out a little bit.

Ew, ew, ew, I grabbed a kleenex from the handy trash basket next to my desk and grabbed the bug off my shirt. Gah, it touched me. Ew. I tossed it in the bin under my desk.

After that, it was almost lunch, so I took care of that, saw Ron, told him all about it (he shook his head at me) and eventually settled back in to work, a drink by my side.

It was a while later, reaching for my drink, that I perchanced to look over. There, almost brushing my hand AGAIN, the Killer Zombie Bug That Would Not Die had crawled up out of the wastebasket, up the side of my desk, directly towards me.

And did I mention I almost touched it again? Ew, yuck, *shivers* gag.

I grabbed another tissues, got the bug and squished it good this time. It was big and icky too. ewwwwwww. Why I did not think to stomp on it, I dunno. I was too busy freaking right the heck out over it.

*shivers again*

Last night Sarah, Emma and I wandered upriver. We had been planning to visit this used clothing store that is closing, but it was… closed. So we stopped in a few places. On the way back home, i notcied a car pulled over and a couple people peering off into a field.

Well, shoot, I’m driving so I’m pulling over. I grabbed my trusty camera and headed over to the couple to take the shot below and a half-dozen others.

The guy next to me had his camera in the trunk and it didn’t zoom well I guess. A couple other cars stopped to look, but a few peeled away with a “Geez, it’s just a moose,” attitude. Whatever.

So we were almost home and I see this:

I pulled over so Sarah could get the first shot (the camera was in her hand) but when we went down the road further we realized there were more people watching and it would be a good show. So I pulled over to a dirt road that turned out to be a direct route to the field they used for launch. We had a great chat with a guy who turned out to be the pilot’s dad.

I took about a hundred pictures and a half-dozen videos I have yet to upload, including one of landing. Then we cheered and clapped when he did land. We and another family (of Mennonites) walked down into the field for a chat and a million questions. Emma even gave him a free hug.

We talked over one another as the sun set behind us, having made a new friend.

Did I mention it was awesome? Because it was.

Click on any of the pictures to go see the rest. I’m making the entry short because the house is empty with Ron and the girls on some sort of secret mission, and I have some work I really REALLY need to get to.