Busy, busy

Tomorrow I’m doing a farm inspection to help the lady who sells us raw goat milk and cheese, a few vegetables, and the best honey on Earth get an alternative (to the expensive Certified Organic) certification for her farm.  (Her farm, in King William, is http://www.pampatike.com/, for local folks.)  My son has been bugging me all winter to go see the goats.  I don’t know how many more times we’ll make the trek out to her farm; it’s 45 minutes away, and after I give up the car it won’t be possible.  I worry about how her farm will fare in the intermediate future, being so remote.

Then , tomorrow afternoon, we’re going to pick strawberries with a friend, which will necessitate making strawberry jam this weekend.  I am a nervous canner, hovering over the instructions the whole time when I do it alone.  Mastering all aspects of canning is on my very long to-do list, although it’s not the highest priority. My husband thinks it would be a good technology to take to Honduras, but I’m not so certain because I doubt canning jars are available there, so I would have to ship them and then hoard them jealously, which isn’t a very good community-building strategy.

Two storm windows we ordered are in at Lowe’s and need to be installed quickly before it gets really hot so that we can open some windows.  The living room, a converted porch which has a wall of custom-built double windows, needs to have custom-made screens installed if it is to be usable at all without air conditioning, a project hubby and I have fought about because he doesn’t want to do it.  My plan is to turn off or drastically reduce the usage of the air conditioner after my mom’s visit, around July 4 when it gets really miserable, so that my son and I can start adapting to the hot and humid climate because we’ll face a whole lot of that in Honduras, and of course to save energy.  My son is at the age when a person's body adapts to their local climate so this is particularly important for him.  My electric usage was unusually low this month and I’d like to keep it that way. I can't turn it off sooner, because my workplace is cold in the summer (being a disgustingly wasteful government building), and it's too hard on the body to go back and forth.

My husband got some work with his cousin’s husband, but I’m not sure he’s going to keep it.  We had to get up at 3:30 in the morning to drive him to their house an hour and a half away.  He is out of town all week, because this is a travelling construction crew.  I called him at 9:30 last night and he was still working.  On a roof.  And lamenting that he didn’t bring the right kind of shoes.  Having been a skilled, well-paid, and valued employee for many years, he is having trouble adjusting to the new reality: the work that is available now is hard, low paid, inconvenient, and inconsistent, and we are lucky to get it.  He doesn’t qualify for unemployment; I’m hoping I will when my job ends, with it being a 2-year temporary position.  I haven’t been able to get an answer from the Employment Commission.

If he continues working, I’ll have to take over the gardening.  This is one of many things I think he’s handicapped me for, intentionally or not.  When someone tells you “this isn’t your job, I’ll do it” for years, you start to doubt that you can do the thing at all.  With the garden, my phobia of certain bugs is admittedly a big disadvantage, especially later in the summer.  But overall, I used to be much more independent than I am now, and I know I can do a lot more than I’ve become accustomed to doing recently.  That’s the benefit of having the life experience I have at 37: I know what I’m capable of.

I’ve got to buckle down and make some lists and prioritize.  My departure date is about 6 months off.  I have many possessions to shed, a house to fix up for rental, all kinds of packing to do (suitcase packing, boxes to ship in the short term, boxes to ship later), a few purchases to make, the normal moving formalities plus setting up proxies for any business I need to transact in the future, and many skills to practice.  Once I put it all on paper, I think I'll (1.) panic, and (2.) stop distracting myself with things that aren't the best use of my time.  Hopefully.