That's how my day filled -- quite like someone pouring pebbles one by one into a sack. Little things piling up. Little pebbles. No big boulders, just little pebbles. And suddenly the load seems great -- far more than any of us can handle.
It's a fairly pleasant day: bugs, yes, but not out of control. Sun, yes, but not excessive. No storms, no rain. A walk to the barn, to the meadow -- all good!
Breakfast, with Ed, on the porch. No time for market today. No new flowers. We eat leftover croissants.
And we discuss our ambitions for this day. They aren't overwhelming at all. We have a date to pick berries at Tipi Farms (our CSA guys, maybe 25 minutes south of the farmette). We do this every year, always picking far too many berries, always meaning to bake with them, always not having the time for it. Still, it's fun and any picked berry is going to be ten times better than ones you get at the store (and twice as good as those at the farmers market because we will have chosen the best ones! They're top of the berry heap)! So, berry picking... But wait: I get a call from the residents at Steffi's House. The internet installer has arrived. There are issues. Totally not their fault. I hurry over to give various permissions to fix this problem, that problem.
Okay, berry picking. We are off!
Even though I am very very tired. Not so much because yesterday was crazy busy, but because I slept very few hours. That cough! And it isn't getting any better. Hmmm... I test. Not Covid. Well that's a relief. I try to ignore it. But it does sound awful. And voice? What voice? I've lost mine...
Well, so be it. We pick.
(Ed: can I borrow your cap? I forgot mine and you dont have a bald spot!)
(Ed: hey, how come you have three times as many as I do?)
(Nina: Honestly, I think it's more like four times as many...)
(Ed: you want to give me some of yours? Nina: I do not.) (In the end, of course, we pull them all together.)
We return with lots of berries. What to do? Well, Ed is itching for us to make freezer jam. Now, this is maybe a little fun when you have what I do not have -- all the time in the world. There are plenty of superb jams out there, but Ed totally believes that we can improve on them by making our own. I leave him to find The Perfect Recipe and I go off, masked, to Steffi's House once more. The washer & dryer are being installed.
I dont linger. The Polish doc is so pregnant! No one wants to be around a coughing person when they're about to deliver their first child.
But I dont immediately return home. I drive to the clinic. I need some wise and sensible person to tell me whether it really is possible for excessive dust exposure to produce such a monumental bronchial inflamation.
Short answer -- yes it is. You know how docs these days always hedge their bets and rarely tell you they are sure about anything? Well this one (in Urgent Care) was absolutely sure. Take this, do that. This too will pass. And now let's talk about travel! (He is near retirement and he cannot wait to take many trips each year! He was very curious where I'm going, where I've been. I almost gave him a link to Ocean.)
Relieved that I'm not contagious, I go back home, where Ed has found a "Perfect Recipe!" I haven't slept since maybe 2:30 a.m. and the idea of making jam is... well, hard to get excited about at the moment. But he is so happy with the plan that I dont have the heart to put him off. We'll need more lemons. And more sugar. I'll go get some right now! Yep, totally fired up.
He comes back from the store, my eyes are closing, I have nothing prepared for dinner. But we make jam.
And we pour it into jars and there you have it. Ready for those winter days where a bright red berry jam can really spark your croissant morning!
I dont have great ideas for anything else today. Leftover pizza, salad for supper, a few hours on the couch, then upstairs to sleep. Full day. Full of those small pebbles.
