This hibiscus got off to a slow start but now that it’s blooming it’s going great guns with a new blossom (or two or three) every day it seems. I love it’s vibrant color and it makes me smile every time I pass by, which I do frequently since it’s positioned at my back door.
I don’t know about you but I’m ready for the weekend! Let’s hope it’s a good one!
The Think Write Thursday topic is to tell us what you do when you find yourself with an abundance of tomatoes because ’tis the season!
Well. Can I just say that an abundance of tomatoes is a very very good problem? Because it is. And there is nothing, absolutely nothing, like a homegrown tomato. I mean, really, there are even songs about the beauty of homegrown tomatoes.
So, when I have too many I focus all of our meals on tomatoes. I make grilled cheese with tomatoes and english muffin pizzas. I make tuna melts with sliced tomatoes and caprese salad – which is a bonus because it also uses up the abundance of basil. I roast tomatoes in the oven and I make BLT sandwiches. I make gazpacho and salsa and tomato jam. And if I still have any left I bring them to work.
This makes me quite popular, I must say.
What do you do when you have an abundance of tomatoes? Share your blog post below and let us know. And, as always, if you wish to play along with Think Write Thursday you can sign up for the weekly topic here.
One would think, what with all of the hospital time over the last week plus, that I would have gotten a lot of knitting done. And one would be right. However, one must also realize that said knitting is for a certain upcoming grandbaby and therefore cannot be shared.
One would also think that, what with all of the hospital time over the last week plus, that I would have gotten a lot of reading done. And one would be right again. While I couldn’t read at all at the beginning of last week (I literally read for 30 minutes and then had no idea what I had been reading) as things settled down I was able to concentrate and I finished two books: Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore and Anything Is Possible.
One would think . . . okay, enough of that, it’s dumb . . .You might expect an updated Bingo card at this point but neither of those books can help me out with that. My one last square is “Originally Published in the 19th Century” and for that I am (still slogging) my way through Anna Karenina. Don’t get me wrong, I am enjoying it immensely but dude. This book is loooooooong. I originally thought I could just listen to it driving back and forth to work but that isn’t going to cut it so now I am alternately reading it on my Kindle and listening in my car. I will not let this one 900 some-odd page book derail my plans for a coverall.
So there.
What are you reading and knitting right now?
Thanks for your patience while I took a little blog break. It wasn’t something I intended but I feel comfortable sharing now that my father-in-law has been gravely ill due to complications from a tick bite. Yes, a teeny tiny deer tick nearly took down a big mountain of a man. Things are looking up and took a big step in the right direction yesterday. I’m not going to go into further details on his battle, but I will say that when they tell you certain illnesses are life threatening for the elderly – they aren’t kidding.
What I can tell you, though, is that I spent much of the past week sitting quietly with Dale by his dad’s bedside. Other family members were there a lot as well, Dale’s siblings and our kids came and went frequently. But, speaking just for us, Dale and I chose to be there as often as possible because we both just felt better when we were sitting by Jack’s side. It was, as Kym once shared, life in parentheses. This analogy comes from the book Out of the Woods: A Memoir of Wayfinding by Lynn Darling and the idea is that “catastrophes provide a pair of parentheses in which to live apart from real life, depositing you rather abruptly on the sidelines for a bit while normal life continues to eddy downstream.” When I first read that on Kym’s blog I thought I understood it. I mean, Kym explained it really well and it made sense. But now that I have spent the last week or so in parentheses I have to say that nope, I didn’t really get it until now.
Let me try to explain. I am a person who craves order and routine. I am also a person who loves summer and in summer my order and routine includes lots of time on the deck, lots of local corn on the cob and fresh tomatoes, lots of drinks al fresco, and lots of play time. Last week none of that happened. We were at the hospital pretty much all day every day and, while I missed all of those summer routines that I love, I also just didn’t care that I wasn’t able to do them. Life was going on around me and moving downstream while I stood on the sidelines and watched. Luckily I have really great people in my life who stepped up a lot and took care of things at work (thank you, Amy) and home, things like picking up cat food (thank you, Sean) and picking up invitations from the printer (thank you, Jo-Ann). I would have been lost were it not for people who reached out and checked in and offered support. Up until yesterday we weren’t certain what would do about our upcoming Cape Cod vacation and were pretty sure we would cancel it. And I just didn’t care. I wasn’t sad at the idea of not going, I wasn’t disappointed, I was just living in parentheses where nothing else mattered except that Jack was sick.
Life in parentheses has a really beautiful way of showing you what truly matters. All the junk, all the stuff of daily life, it just slips away and leaves you with perfect clarity: the only thing that matters are the people you love.
Want to know how I know that I’m moving outside the parentheses and back into routine life?
I was awake at 4am making lists of things I need to do before we go on vacation. And blogging. It’s good to be back.
I’ve got some stuff going on that I can’t talk about just yet, which is weird for me since I pretty much tell you guys everything. This story isn’t mine alone, though, so I need to keep it private for the moment. Just know that Dale and I and the kids are fine and I’ll be back when I can. Any good vibes you can send our way would also be much appreciated.
In the meantime, enjoy that photo mosaic of what was a very lovely weekend.
Later, gator!
