It’s just before midnight and I should be sleeping. My feet are aching and my head is still going, though, so here I sit.
I had the day off from work today — actually used some of my vacation time to stay home. And since I had the whole day free when I wouldn’t have normally, I figured I should try to squeeze as much out of it as possible, right?
So I slept in a little bit, woke up slowly, but got started not long after Justin left for a meeting on the Island. I cleaned the house from top to bottom — the kind of cleaning that’s putting things back in place and not actually dusting or wiping things with cleaners. But we just did that a little while ago, so it just needed a good tidy. And then I worked on getting my office back in order because it was getting really bad in there. I pulled out all my sewing projects while I was at it, and after things were tidy and the laundry was folded and there wasn’t any more cleaning to be done other than vacuuming and Justin promised to do that, I took my sewing downstairs and worked on that. I fixed a handful of things, a sweater, skirts, and finished up a craft project I’ve been working on for a few days. I made these! Except I did maple and elm leaves and I didn’t do the interfacing because that was just too much work. But I’ve got 12 of these double-sided things around the house — four of them are hanging from the light in the dining room. They’re adorable! Plus I rolled a few napkins for tomorrow with twine bows and a little fall decal. And we collected a bunch of pine cones lately and I’d soaked them and set them out to dry and put them in a variety of places around the house, like in glass vases and a bowl-centerpiece with a candle. Did you know that when you soak pine cones they close back up?! I didn’t know they would do that!
Anyway, I went to a chiropractor appointment and back home and started on the rolls for tomorrow and the pies. And just hit problem after problem the whole way. The milk for the rolls had to be room temperature. The shortening for the pie crust needed to be chilled. The pumpkin pie recipe called for 2 cans of evaporated milk. And then I realized, after running to the store, that it was for two pies and I only was going to make one. So I put out the milk to warm, I put the Crisco in the freezer to chill. I eventually got the rolls going and they rose just great for the first half of their rising, and didn’t rise at all for the second half. I didn’t put enough water in my pie crust and when I went to roll them out, they kept breaking because they were too dry. I had to bake the crust for the French Silk and it just didn’t go as fast as the recipe said it should. But that whole pie is a shambles because halfway through folding the whipped cream into the chocolate mixture, I dropped the whole bowl onto the floor. It landed right-side-up so I was able to finish and put what was left into the pie. But about 1/3 of the bowl ended up in a splatter across the floor, the cupboards, and up my pants legs. I figure, we’re going to just fill in the rest of the space with whipped cream tomorrow. And while I’ve rolled out the crust for the pumpkin pie and it’s sitting in a cake pan in the fridge because we only have one pie plate, I gave up on trying to make that one and just sat down with Justin to watch some TV and relax. I’ll do that pie tomorrow.
We have people coming over tomorrow — a couple people we met through the gamer geek group here in town. People whose families are far away, too. So it should be a fun day. I just have to not freak out too much. Our Thanksgiving meal track record isn’t great. I know once, we ate at 10:00 at night. And it looks like last year, we didn’t eat our Thanksgiving meal on Thanksgiving day at all! I can’t remember why that was the case . . . . Anyway, I just really want it to go well.
But I hope you’re all doing great! I hope everyone’s traveling safely and that you all have a wonderful time together. Sorry we couldn’t make it up this year. Money. Plane tickets. One of these days I’ll figure out how to make those two things work together better.
Anyway, I’m sure I’ll talk to you all soon. Be safe! Have a great day! And I love you lots!