Saturday

A day of looking ahead. To Thanksgiving, for example. I know people are in marathon mode. You hear it everywhere. Yesterday, when I sat down for a Friday glass of wine at a neighborhood wine shop with my daughter, it was the predictable back and forth at the table next to ours: "I'm baking two pies." "Should I bring the rolls? I'll bring the rolls." "Not too many! Nobody ever eat the rolls!" "Who is doing the potatoes?" And so on.

At the grocery store on Thursday, I had asked the clerk if they were ready for the Thanksgiving craziness next week.
Oh sure. We have to be. But you know, at Thanksgiving, people are so much more calm and happy here than they are at Christmas time. All hell breaks loose here on the days before Christmas. It's a real different kettle of fish.

So, Thanksgiving calm, eh?

I'm not baking pies. I'm buying them from a bakery. I'm not making rolls (though a "yes" to corn muffins). But there are a lot of dishes on our family menu and with the young parents having to mind little tykes, I see myself as the kitchen staff for the big turkey day. And so on this rather pretty Saturday, after feeding the cats...

("why are you so late this morning??")





... and after breakfast, no longer solo...






... I begin to make lists and write out a schedule of cooking events.


All morning long Ed heroically continues to shovel the mud out of the driveway. Later, he will set himself to fixing the broken valve on the tire of my car. Me, I clean the greased-up oven glass with a very green but basically worthless combination of baking soda and water. As he runs necessary errands (new valve, bigger broom for the messes in the sheep shed), I step in to do the second round of cat care, which then triggers a typical array of mini-dramas: one cat locks himself in on the porch, another drags a dead animal into the sheep shed. These things drove me nuts when Ed was away. Now I just shake my head at the cat nuisances and look forward to relaying them to Ed when he returns from his shopping trip.

In the afternoon, he and I take a break from chores to go out and play disc golf. It's cold and a bit windy, but the sun continues to sparkle and shine down on this increasingly wintry brown landscape and the sandhills (can you see them?) are crooning away their love song for these northern lands they'll soon leave behind.





Such a pretty day. Pretty and calm. And that's a good thing.