I am dismayed tonight. It is Monday night. Elv is down in St. Croix working while yet it is not too muddy and wet to work. (I was going to say “while yet ’tis day”, but of course that isn’t true because it is dark out.) And that’s my whole point. I’m sitting at home in the living room at the Stone House, alone! Again! Just because it might rain?! Seriously? So Elv is working into the night or until it rains and supposedly it was pointless for us girls to go down too this week, “If it rains, we’re not going to sit around down there; we’ll come home to wait it out.”
Not that I didn’t enjoy the opportunity to stay at home. The gathered tomatoes all washed and laid out on a towel in the kitchen remind me. So does the cleaner utility room downstairs where Elv got the big dehumidifier going so that now it is a sweet smelling and dry room. I enjoyed being here all morning while Francis gathered up and tucked her family into their pickup to go back home to Nebraska. Actually Josh helped her and mostly did the vehicle packing. So it was nice to be here for that and not off to work. And then when Lisl called to say they’d picked a neighbor’s apple tree and she wondered if I would come help her to make some of them into canned apple pie filling. I could and I did.
However, I realized by not going down to St Croix as planned today that I was really enjoying that even though it is crazy busy. Our weekends bulge out in a lot of unhandy places with living in two locations by turns all the time. I don’t know how to say that any better, although I’m sure there’s a way.
For instance, Labor Day weekend came in with overnight company, Francis’ visit, my work, the girls’ canning projects which I wanted to help with, and grocery shopping all to be done in their allotted time slot. And not enough slots for the number things to do. I simple couldn’t usher grocery shopping into any of those spaces. It was a big bulge pushing the whole weekend into a seemingly impossible, worrisome marathon. In the end, I actually prayed about it.
Praying did it. Elv offered to do the shopping if I would provide a list. Happy dances in my heart. Suddenly the weekend was do-able. (Besides, when Elv grocery shops, he gets nice things and extra things, maybe even name brand things, for a change.) So that was great. Then he topped it all off by telling Lisl, who was having a applesauce canning day with Francis and Kristine, that he’d bring Pizza Hut pizza in for supper if that would help.
The point is, that together, Elv and I can make both the work week AND the weekend happen in comparative sanity and joy. Together. So for me to be sitting here at home while he is off logging in the hills of the St. Croix valley late tonight, is just wrong. Don’t you think?
Postscripts: We did have such a nice weekend. Rosie let me go early from work Saturday, so I hurried over to Lisl’s expecting to get in on the cleanup of their canning day. To my delight I found them all sitting outside on a rice mat sipping iced coffees which they shared with me, too, of course.
Our overnight company was of the best sort being family … and friends, to boot.
Those Nebraska people of ours have two amazing littles: Michael (1) communicates quite lucidly without words in a most efficient of male fashions. You’d have to be “dumber than a post” to not understand. Anne (3) uses words … lots of them. She’s delightful, too.
The smoked cheese Elv bought at Miller’s is rather yummy. And the pizza supper finished up our Saturday splendidly.
Stone House Scribblings 