Monday Morning

Farewell summer!  Hello fall.  Well, technically by the calendar the summer isn't over yet.  But, once the school buses start arriving, it feels like they bring fall with them.

Here are some of my thoughts on this Monday summer/fall morning...

1.  Two boys are at school!  
      Note to self - When they say to be waiting early for the bus on the first day of school they mean it.   The bus came about 10 minutes earlier than I expected this morning for Wyatt (entering 2nd grade!).  So, this resulted in rushing out the door frantically grabbing the camera and throwing my child on the bus with a quick kiss. (Luckily I had taken a few pictures of him earlier in the morning.)

     Things were a little more relaxed for taking Edison to school.  He's in afternoon kindergarten so I actually drop him off at the school after lunch.  He'll come home on the bus with Wyatt.  Since this was the second time I've had a child start kindergarten I didn't expect it to be a hugely emotional event.  But, I'll admit, I did get a bit of a lump in my throat when I saw how proud he looked as he walked into the school with his spanky new backpack.

     (I'll post pictures later....)

2.  I had a tomato catastrophe last week.
    I was too busy writing my landlord series to write anything else.  But, I'll tell you now.  I'm no longer weeping and gnashing my teeth, but it still spites me what happened.  So, I had a boocoo collection of tomatoes that I wanted to can.  But, with four boys I don't have a large window of time to work on my big projects.  I tried to do it the 'quickie' way.

      Usually when canning tomatoes you should blanch the tomatoes and peel off the skin.  I didn't feel like I had the time for that...and I don't mind the skins (there are vitamins in there right?).  So, I decided to wash them (twice to be sure they were clean), core them, and cut them into chunks, then I'd cook them down a bit before putting them in my canning jars.

      I had one large pot with about 4 gallons of tomatoes, and another smaller pot with about 2 gallons.  Any guesses as to what happened?  I scorched my large pot of tomatoes.  Really really bad.  It smelled horrible, but I kept hoping that maybe the ones near the top of the pot were OK.  So, I tasted them.
    
      It tasted like what I imagine licking an ash tray must taste like.  Four gallons of tomatoes ruined!  The smaller pot was fine, but I was SO angry at myself!


3.  Projects, projects.
    With the 2 big boys in school, I'm feeling like this might be my opportunity to get some projects done around this house.  Now if I can just locate my motivation and energy....