Blog Post: Apples and Dog-cations

It’s October!

It’s October and there was a stranger picking apples from our tree this week.

I mean, not exactly strangers.  The lady – Barb – comes by every year.  She comes by about a month early every year and we tell her our apples will be ready in October, so she came by Friday with a grandson and picked a couple bushels I think.

(Every time I say bushel, I hear my grandmother singing “I love you a bushel and a peck, a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck…”)

(Turns out it’s from Guys and Dolls!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfnwhlywWjA )

Then today, Ezra, who lives a block away, stopped in – he left a message a month ago and turns out, no big surprise, that he works at the same university that I do.  He makes cider!  And he offered us some sweet cider in return.

He came with a truck and some big yellow crates and took – a bunch of apples.  I didn’t keep track.  There’s still some for us, that’s the other half of the important point, the first half being there’s less apples for us to pick and they’re getting used!

(Since I can’t give them away at work this year like I have in the past).

He even took some off the hedgerow trees, which are small apples, almost out of reach, and hard to get to, considering our hedgerow is aggressive. (It bites.  It even bites fae!)

So yay!  Our apples are going to turn into cider and I don’t have to do the work, huzzah.

Of course, we’re going to turn other apples into sauce (and cake, and cookies, and… sausage twists and soup… and I’ll take recipes.  Ezra left everything over normal-human-height so we still have plenty to eat. )

In addition to apples! I took Wednesday-Friday off or partially off and dogsat/housesat for my parents again.

Being in my parents’ house is a little weird.  Sleeping in their bed while they’re gone is really really really weird. (Dad turned my bedroom into a massage parlor after I moved and my old bed is actually in my “dining room” here.  So it’s Mom-and-Dad’s bed or the couch).  And their house is … quieter and louder than my house.

It’s nearly as isolated as this place (a house a 1/4 mile away in either direction,  two across the road in that direction.)  There’s less house-noises (no computer fans, no fire fans) but then there’s MORE house noises.  It’s a pine house with pine purlins and pine floors and pine ceilings and pine beams. It’s nearly 40 years old (I “helped” build it – I was 4, okay? I didn’t help a lot) but it still makes the noises a pine house makes – creaks and cracks and snaps and creaks.  And they have a furnace now.  Which is great because my dad had his heart attack while splitting wood (not that they don’t still use the wood stove, but at least they have a back-up).

(Does everyone with aging parents worry about them not being wise about taking care of themselves?)

(Does everyone else with aging parents know some of the shit they did that was definitely not taking care of themselves?  When they were theoretically adults?)

The dogs are pretty well-behaved – They DO think I sleep weird hours, get distracted way too easily, and don’t speak Dog nearly well enough  – but I managed to get them fed, get them walked, let them out into the pen, and keep them from digging up chipmunk nests.

I almost managed to feed myself decently too, which it turns out that I am not all that good at doing.  Thank goodness for my husband, I have to say, because he keeps me fed (And, um.  Takes care of me or at least makes sure I take care of myself…)

I took a full writing day (Except 2 hours for a calc exam) on Thursday, and beat my current 2020 high wordcount.  Which, um, is not nearly as high as my 2019 high count (not including the Livewriting Day, which, since it’s a race for wordcount, is not really… countable.).  I got some good prompts and had some fun.

Then I drove back home (2 hours) – did some phone writing on the way (as on the way up), stopped at the place that used to have the BEST pierogis.  They don’t have those anymore, but I bought some cheese and chocolate.

Got pizza at the place that doesn’t deliver to us.

(though let’s be honest, nobody delivers to us)

And here I am home!

Where strangers are picking our apples.

Happy autumn, y’all.

10 thoughts on “Blog Post: Apples and Dog-cations

  1. I saw the title of this post and immediately recalled a previous post where an actual stranger was picking apples without asking.

    Doesn’t feel like that long ago, really.
    I say, I rather object to this phenomenon where time mysteriously disappears! :p

  2. Oh, I enjoyed reading this! Real life good news, neither tiny nor world-shaking, and in a pleasant country-like environment that this city boy gets way too little of.

  3. Doggies!

    You are a capable cook, IIRC? Or is this the too-easily-distracted issue the dogs complained about biting you as well? :}

    Fresh pressed sweet cider is *amazing*. If you ever have the chance to be there when Ezra is pressing cider, take it, and taste some cider straight off the press when it’s still translucent green and has barely oxidized at all.

    • (Does everyone else with aging parents know some of the shit they did that was definitely not taking care of themselves? When they were theoretically adults?)

      I certainly got my “it’s fine, I don’t need to see a doctor” from Dad. 🙁

    • Well, mostly, *T* is a very good cook. I am tolerably capable.
      I am too easily distracted and… just don’t?

      We pressed cider a couple years and OMG YES.

      • Oooh! Do you have a press? Or where do you go to press cider?

        Yeah, the distracted-and-don’t is why I have a handful of “boil water” level fallbacks for feeding myself acceptably. (I don’t use them as much no longer living by myself, and miss them, and have mixed feelings about that.)

        • We have a near-permanent-loan press. We find the grinder a PITA (and a pain in the knuckles). If we ever decide to press our own in any quantity, we will rig up something mechanical.

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