Fun-n-Games

This week has been one for the therapist, let me tell you. It started out pretty normal, then Tam got sick. Really sick, like coughing up a lung, running a temp kind of sick. It was loverly. So very loverly. She’s such a delight when she’s sick. Calm, cool, quiet.

I’m going to hell for lying, aren’t I?

Anyway, while my darling was busy finding new and interesting ways to die, someone (and that would be me) had to do SOMETHING with all the stuff we’d bought to put up. We’ll start with the 20 or so pounds of plums for jelly (ok, maybe 20 lbs is a bit of an exaggeration, but I got 25 half-pints of plum… stuff (because I couldn’t find a recipe and it didn’t all set, so I’ll have to do it over, but I’m going to wait until winter when heating up the entire house doesn’t cause the floor to melt under my feet).

Oh, yes, that kind of week indeed.

Then there was the 40lb box of beans. 40. Pounds. Of. Beans.

Spawn came over and helped me put up 25 pints of dilly beans (oh, YUM!) yesterday, then I wrangled three more quarts of the dilled lovelies and one gallon bag for the freezer. After that was all done, Thing showed up and I chopped up three pounds of jalapeno peppers for a treat I call candied peppers (they’re like bread and butter pickles, only sweeter and much hotter). But I made a slight mistake and only got five pints out of it, so I used the sweet brine on some garlic and pearl onions. Then in a stroke of genius, I filled the last pints with the leftover (sweet, spicy, tangy, and delicious) brine which I will later (in the winter months) make pepper jelly. Let me tell you about pepper jelly, when it’s right, it’s amazing on cheese, chicken, veggies, old sneakers… you get the idea, it is some bad-ass stuff and I love it.

Anyway, I’ve been canning for the past three days in some of the hottest weather we’ve had all summer. And I’m loving it, except for the part where I’m too tired to edit.

But the other thing that’s been going on is this pain in my shoulder. I hurt myself at work and I’ve been going to occupational therapy for it. It’s not working. The doctor said I need an MRI. Doctor is a sadist because she doesn’t think the open MRI’s do a good enough job, so she wants me to go in for an enclosed MRI.

Not. Good.

This old dyke has some major issues with claustrophobia and simply thinking about being shoved headfirst into a long metal tube and closed in there for who-the-hell knows how long makes me panic. Doctor pulled the “nice” card and prescribed an anti-anxiety pill to take one hour before my appointment.

You know that part of my life where I’m in my kitchen and canning everything that doesn’t move? Guess who forgot to go get her happy pill? Cue the “crazy attack” where I send my sick wife to the drug store to pick it up for me because I cannot leave whatever I’m cooking to do it. Yay, she got it. If she hadn’t, it would have been difficult to get me into the tube.

“Ok, Karen, we’re going to roll you into the tube now. Oops! Put your arms down, please.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes you can, just put them down.”

“Fuck you. I’m not going in there without a pill.”

“You’re being one right now, Karen.”

Last, but certainly not least on my list of things to do sooner rather than later, is look into financing for our shop. After a lot of talking to the owner and discussions between ourselves, we’re going to do whatever it takes to get that shop and get the hell out of the jobs that are killing us. Somehow, I need to come up with a very large sum of money (which will mean a lien on the house again, but oh, well) then we’ll be free to move into a better phase of life, mainly where neither of us is beaten, pinched, scratched, spit on, bitten, choked, scorned by supervisors, cheated out of a promotion because a supervisor doesn’t like us, or the usual litany of crap on the job things that make people want to get on the rooftop with a slingshot and a large supply of turds and just cut loose.

It’s a dream and one that I think we’ll be realizing sooner than either of us thought. I just need to sell a few thousand copies of my book, and we’ll be there!