her able hands

I wrote the post below on Sunday and intended to publish it yesterday morning but while I was going over it one more time I got hit with a wave of stomach cramps that knocked me over. I then rode that wave to the porcelain bowl where I spent about four hours of my day turning inside out.

All my wishing for more time at home…be careful what you wish for and all that. I called in sick and can’t help but wonder if they thought I did because it was seventy degrees out. Trust me when I say I would rather have been at work feeling well than running back and forth from the toilet to the bed and to the tub to soak my poor, beleaguered bottom.

Of course, I had Lila at home with me too. She was such a champ, hung out and played with her dolls and her kitchen and her doctor kit for hours. Every now and then she’d come in and put her hand on my forehead and whisper, “Oh, my poor, sweet, dear, dear child.”

At around 2:30 in the afternoon I let her go outside and I sat slumped on the porch swing while she ran around the yard and collected sticks in her shopping cart, used a pine bough to sweep off the front walkway, and made up elaborate stories that she narrated out loud and in different voices. I brought my notebook and my Crockett’s Victory Garden book out and made some notes on planting, a half-stab at a schedule. The sun on my body felt so healing and I started to get hungry so I made some toast. Bad idea, that.

I suspect food poisoning because I had salad bar the day before and nobody else is feeling at all sick. I guess I needed a stronger nudge towards bringing my lunch from home every day. I do most of the time in my Mr. Bento but I have no idea what to bring for lunch today, my tummy still feels like it got punched, but is holding its own against the tea with honey I’m sipping now.

Anyway, the real post with photos is behind the cut.

We had such a gorgeous weekend and I’m wishing for shorter work days so I can get the yard cleaned up and new animal shelters built. It’s so muddy though and while everybody in the neighborhood was out, only the people on high ground were doing anything remotely work-like on their properties.

We came home from work Friday evening to the return of the Robins.

What a song! I counted sixteen on the ground before I ran inside to grab the camera and then had to be content with a shot of two brave souls and then some perched in the tree when I startled them off the lawn. I want a bigger lens so I can get those shots without terrifying my subject.

The warm sun left only a trace of the grand fort and Lila and our new neighbor’s three year-old daughter spent some time on Sunday kicking at the solid foundation and rushing down the slide to slam into the pile.

Someone needs to invent a 60 hour weekend. And until we finish moving all of our stuff over from the old house (garage and barn) I’m going to feel like the weekends are too short and I’m swimming in place. I spend Saturday sorting (give away, throw away, keep and store properly) and on Sunday we go back out and get another load so it looks like I haven’t done anything.

Granted we avoided dealing with it all winter except for a few trips where we grabbed something we’d been looking for, but didn’t do any major hauls. Now that we’ve listed the property with a realtor again, we need to put in the time and get it done. The goal is to have everything out in a month or so, and hopefully the house sold by summer.

We did move over the plant stand—disassembled—and all of my seed starting supplies. Hopefully we’ll set it up next weekend so I can get some tomatoes, peppers and eggplants started. The potatoes should arrive soon, so I need to call the horse farm to see if they can deliver that aged manure I never got around to in the fall. I’ll order that and a load of dark mulch. I can’t wait to see the two steaming piles in the yard and to get out there with my shovel and wheelbarrow. Dirty work followed by cold beer sounds like heaven.

I’ve also squeezed in a recipe testing baking effort the past few weekends. This time I made the Devil’s Food Three-Layer Cake from the More from Magnolia Cookbook. I changed it up to 4 eggs instead of 3 which was a mistake, and I used buttermilk instead of milk, which was a good idea that would have been better minus that one egg. Her recipe calls for a 7-minute icing, but I made the Vanilla Buttercream instead because it’s my favorite and I’ve tried three recipes in search of the perfect balance. Still searching. The cake came out almost moist and very chocolaty (used Ghiradelli bittersweet). The icing just like great grandma always made—rich, creamy, pucker-sweet, though not quite thick enough and I like it with even more vanilla than the tablespoon called for. Lila insisted we decorate it with a little pink, even though I was going for something more rustic.

We piped pale pink starbursts and Lila dipped her fingers in the bowl while I recorded our effort for posterity.

We then made our neighbors very happy with the giant wedges we delivered to their doorsteps—an entire 3-layer cake is much too much cake for a family of four.

I always make the mistake of tasting too much icing as I go and by the time the whole thing is put together, I’m so sugared out I don’t even want the foolish cake in the house anymore. Just the smell of the sugar and vanilla makes me want to gag. I broke out the wedge of Manchego and the Red Zin I picked up last weekend. That with some toasted sesame crackers cut right through the sugar and I felt much better, thank goodness. Sugar and salt. Mmm.

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