34 Pints And 6 Half Pints Later

I spent ALL of Sunday canning. I made two quadruple batches of marinated two bean salad*, ten pints of salsa, five pints of dilly beans (would have been six but for the first time in my eight years of canning, a jar broke in the canner), and one pot of cooked down tomato sauce for the freezer (I have to try it out Karmyn).

It rained yesterday which was wonderful. I really don't understand why everyone finds it so hard to live with. I was even out on my scooter in it which isn't my favorite thing in the world, but it doesn't sap my enjoyment of it. This summer was so mild and bearable, if this is the kind of summer northern Oregon is used to having (as opposed to last year which cooked me like a pig on a spit) then I've picked the right place to live. Heaven. I suppose, though, that even if this cool summer is the usual, global warming will slowly transform this climate into one where all summers are unbearable like last year.

The only problem with the rain is that it may make the tomatoes split at the farm. I'm not done with tomatoes yet. I plan to finish this week. I just hope I am still going to be able to pick them. I plan to go out to Bernards today to pick more beans and tomatoes. I still need to make more dilly beans (because I still have some gorgeous fresh dill heads from the market), marinated green beans, and stewed tomatoes. My plan is to can and freeze heavily this week and then work on organizing and cleaning half of next week, then see if I can get a couple of cases of good Bartlett pears. Once I've canned twenty four quarts of pears I think I'll declare my canning season over. Because I have to start looking for part time work.

Max's nose is healing. It still hurts him when I dab a little Vaseline on it to moisturise it, and he's very dramatic about letting me know it. A couple of times this week-end he scared the bajeezus out of me by yelling out "I have a bloody nose!!!!!!" so I come running only to find out that there was just a tiny spec of blood coming out when he blew his nose. This is the kind of thing that makes me want to strangle my sweet little lieberschleban**. Max woke up last night in his sleep and I'm so used to blood and calamity around here I had to steel myself up for the inevitable fountain of gore...instead I discovered that he woke up to the sound of the kitty retching and wanted me to find the vomit. I didn't find any so hopefully it won't be like the time the kitty pooped in Max's room and cleverly hid it for one week.

I don't think I'll totally relax about Max's nose job for a few weeks. If I don't have to deal with any bloody noses for that long I'll start to relax. It took two years of frequent blood drama to get me to the point where if I hear Max say the word I come running with five tissue boxes and my little box of tricks that almost never work to calm him down. (Maybe the kids of zen-type parents respond to deep breathing but Max really resists the temptation to get enough oxygen. He prefers to hyperventilate.) I get more stressed out than most moms when my kid has a tantrum because all Max has to do is tense up his whole body for a good scream and he can make his nose blood vessels pop. I look forward to not having to worry about this anymore.

This cold of mine has turned out to be quite mild. I had decided already not to complain a lot or try to fight it. I find that colds run through my body faster when I just relax and let it do it's thing. As it turns out, it's just an inconvenience. A little discomfort, but nothing compared to the million other worse colds I've gotten along with Max over the last few years. Sometimes I don't know how I've survived the last six years of parenthood. I am made of stern stuff. I mean, I've gotten mugged and scared the mugger away with my extreme wrath. I've gotten punched in the face by a drunk skinhead (not a shining moment in my life). I've lived through a lot of stuff that it's taken a certain amount of grit in my gut to get through, but nothing compares to parenthood when it comes to challenging me and my resources.

It just struck me right this minute, how hard the last (almost) seven years have been. Right from the forty hour labor through to now. Nonstop challenges. I have actually admitted once or twice that I am not a person who should ever have had a child***, I'm not naturally equipped to deal with the constant little emergencies that having a child ensures you will experience. By the same token, I love the bones of my baby. He's pretty extraordinary. I guess the reason I'm bringing this up is that even if Max doesn't get bloody noses any more, there's always some new challenge to replace the one you've gotten past. So the best thing is to find more inner strength, build a secret fort to hide in when the going gets rough (shhhhh, I think I'll choose my pantry for my secret fort. Don't tell my family, OK?). I want one filled with fashion magazines and beer. And cheese. I'm just coming to accept that unless you're Lucille, parenting never gets easier, it just gets different.

On the more positive side of this parenting gig, I have to say that babies are for the birds. Just kidding, I wouldn't really throw any babies to the birds. I like babies actually. They smell good a lot of the time. What I mean is that having a baby is not nearly as cool as having a kid. I don't for a million rubles wish Max was a baby again. It did used to be easier to entertain him when he was a toddler, we played a lot of chase and that was so much fun. Now he's always complicating things with RULES. He makes new rules every seven seconds. And he doesn't tell you what they are until you break them. What's cool though is this whole reading thing. The whole universe is opening up to Max now that he can read. He can read better than he wants us to know about. What it means is that I can't hide the world from him. He can read the writing on the wall better than I can sometimes.

He doesn't want to read anything when we ask him to and he pretends to hate reading, but once a curious mind gets it's grips on a tool as useful as reading, it can't help but use it. I find Max mouthing words to himself when he thinks I'm not looking. He'll read signs, labels, he reads along with us now when we read to him. He constantly asks us where we are on the page, a totally new phenomenon. It's because he's kind of reading along with us. He wants to see the words he's hearing us say. I always think it's so dorky when parents go all gushy about their kids learning to read, as though billions of people haven't learned to do that before them. But I totally get it. I feel the same way.

The way kids look at the world and explain it's mysteries is captivating. How funny is it that Max thinks Santa and God are perverts for seeing EVERYTHING we do? He doesn't think it's cool at all that they can see us go to the bathroom, he thinks that's very wrong. I find it hard to argue that one. I think it's wrong too.

Enough. I have a lot to do. I have a lot of jars yet to fill. I have to admit (well, I don't HAVE to) that I have this semi-secret ambition not to buy any canned goods all winter. Yes, I'm saying I want to can all of of the food I'll need for the winter besides fresh food such as in season vegetables (cabbage, chard, lettuce, winter squash, etc.). Is there any reason I shouldn't have this ambition? Does it reek of obsession...or good sense? Wouldn't it be cool? Wouldn't that be amazingly satisfying?

Alright, I'm off to shower and pick food. Laundry be damned!





*The less famous cousin of the "Three bean salad" known and loved by all deli aficionados. I didn't have any garbanzo beans but I have twenty five pounds of dried kidney beans so I just used more kidneys and more green beans.

**I spell that word differently every time. I figure that since it's a word I made up, I can spell it however I want. It just now occurred to me that maybe it's a real word in German and someone is going to bust my chops over it. Let 'em bust me...I just hope it doesn't mean "penis" or "nose job" in German.

***Don't anyone bother trying to say otherwise. Sometimes the truth sounds harsher than it is. I wouldn't probably say something like this about any other woman on the planet, because that's not something we can really know about other people. But we certainly can know it about ourselves.