1. My sister Debbie is going to come out and help for a bit. I’m not sure when she’ll get here as she needs to get the FMLA paperwork through but I can’t wait. It will be so good for my mother and it will be a needed load off my shoulders for a bit. I feel better just knowing she’ll be here. My parents’ homecare worker Sarah has also been incredible….she took my mother to visit my dad yesterday and took her out shopping. Last night my mother sounded better than she has in some time. Of course I forgot to bring the laundry marker over to her house this morning and you’d think I’d killed the cats or something from her reaction. I know how you can overreact when you’re feeling fragile though so I’ll try not to get REALLY IRRITATED.
2. So tonight if I somehow tiredly agree to let Owen sleep with us will you just come and shoot me tomorrow morning? Because I will be so tired and with such massive bags under my eyes (kind of like today) that you might as well just put me out of my misery. Geesh.
3. I went back to my old template because I decided that even though I liked the images against the black…reading the white on black just added another level of stress to everyone’s lives. A small level but hell, NONE of us need more stress, right?
4. I had a brat-to-brat comparison last night (and that’s bratwurst not Vertebrat) and I was appalled by the Schnuck’s brand. Owen has a LARGE capacity for bratwurst so we have to get two packages. The first was the standard Johnsonville brats….very good. The second was the Schnuck’s brand because we got the last package of the Johnsonville. The Schnuck’s brand was so salty that I threw them out. And I’m girl that likes salt for better or worse. Spicy + salty = good. I’d choose salty over sweet any day but these were inedible. Somebody had to have made a mistake….that can’t have been their regular recipe.
5. Now after that scintillating bit of blogging I will move on to something equally exciting….my pole beans and sugar snap peas are up and the sugar snap peas have put out their first little tendrils. Woo-hooooo! Here’s a picture from several days ago….believe me this is VERY exciting….
6. Ernie goes in for the rest of his pre-op stuff today….physical, EKG, appointment with anesthesia, etc.
7. Oh and yeah, the nursing home has already lost one of my father’s hearing aids. We meet with the social worker on Friday afternoon and I’m trying to gear up and think of everything we need to talk about.
We get our meats from Triple S Farms [Stan Schutte]. We joined his CSA a couple of years ago. So we get a monthly delivery from him. Plus, he’s at the Farmer’s Market in Urbana when that comes into season in a couple of weeks.
He has the most wonderful, organically-raised meats [pork, chicken, beef] and has restaurant client in Chicago. He has 4 kinds of sausages now: Polish; Italian; German Bratwurst; Andouille. It is the BEST ever. We haven’t bought a single cut of meat from the Supermarket in over 2 years. I’d go with Stan’s brats any day. His pork shoulder is a dream!
So glad your sister is coming to help out. And hurrah for beans and peas! That’s beautiful.
Also, to Mel: We also get Stan’s meats. Last time, we bought the brats, but we haven’t tried them yet.