The Ups and Downs and What I Learned
So, lets start with the ups of the weekend:
Sleeping in until 10:30 both days, cuddles and playtime with multiple rambunctious and adorable kittens, a few pieces of highly necessary new clothing for the year (which were practically free using a combo of store credit, sales, and coupons), beautiful weather, homemade salmon burgers with the most epic cilantro mayo and baked zucchini fries, free tickets and excellent seats to a Red Wings baseball game and double date with our friends Chris and Shawnda, fireworks set to Elvis tunes, three free movie nights (Despicable Me 2, Unfinished Song, and The Intouchables – all highly recommended!), big baskets of gorgeous homegrown peaches and pickling cucumbers from the public market, using gift cards from Wegman’s for a few free groceries, new spices (and very slowly building up my dream matching glass spice jar collection), a clean house, and a relaxing Sunday pizza night with my guy.
And the downs:
We lost our sweet blue crayfish, Gigi, on Friday night. Molting is really tough on these little guys and, while natural and necessary for their growth, the inability to shed the shell, leading to suffocation, is one of the leading causes of mortality in crays. We’ve watched him grow since the day he was born, and he was such a friendly, playful little boy, so we’ll definitely miss him. Our lone cray, Ace, is probably going to receive a whole lot more attention than she bargained for.
Aaaannd an awesome mason jar packed with bread & butter pickles that I had just finished making shattered as I put it into the boiling pot of water to seal it, not only creating a huge mess of glass, onions, pickles, mustard seeds, and sticky, staining yellow liquid all over the kitchen, but also wasting all that effort, time, and fresh pickle goodness! I was peeved. But Ted was so awesome and loving, and with a great sense of humor, expertly cleaned everything up for me while I huffed and sulked. He’s the best. Truly.
And what I learned:
It sucks when your pets die, but that’s why you enjoy them while you have them…and playing with five soft and feisty kittens can help ease the pain a little. Ted always knows how to make me feel better.
I learned why you always make two jars of pickles instead of just one. I also learned, using turmeric for the first time, why all my favorite recipe bloggers use those lovely looking brushed stainless steel measuring cups and spoons (uh, and it’s not just because they’re pretty. Apparently, turmeric stains your white plastic measuring cups from college like mad).
So, I’ll be adding these and these or these and these to my birthday/Christmas lists, as well as one of these babies since I think Ted using one of his dirty shop/tool clamps to retrieve my jars from their boiling bath totally negates the whole point of the sterilization process (it does.)
Finally, I learned that after so many boiling baths, sometimes glass jars just plain fatigue and you should use extra caution when plopping them into a pot of boiling water.
The end.
