The Little Adventures

I am attempting a new experiment in blogging in order to dial up my posting frequency. In a look back to the original meaning of the blog as more of a journal I will pick some of the little things that go into a day around here and create a post about it. I'm expecting it to be more stream of consciousness because I am refusing to structure the post in any way. So be forewarned...if I begin a story I tend to go off into tangents. There are less likely to be pictures to go with my stories because I am spastic about getting my pictures off of my camera - another complication to my writing habits.

So let's begin a little adventure!

What did I find on my kitchen floor this afternoon but Gabe...holding court with the remains of a stick of butter. At the start of the day it was a whole stick, soft because originally it's purpose was  cookies that didn't happen, and partially smashed because yesterday Gabe had grabbed the same stick and I successfully recaptured it. I am reasonably certain he ate half of it. "Why?" you ask? True, I didn't actually witness its ingestion. By the time I happened on the scene, he was busily decorating the floor with what had not been smeared on his own clothing. There appeared to be about half the butter left that I mopped off my greasy boy and floor.

To a certain degree I accept this as the consequences of my actions.

My entire day had been centered around making wine. I had grape wine started courtesy grapes from my sister-in-law. When some people receive grapes they think jelly, but I think wine instead. So the grapes were finishing their primary fermentation stage and needed moved to a carboy. Also a couple of days ago, John and the girls picked a bunch of wild plums so my plan was to turn part of those into wine as well. There was only one problem, the containers I needed to use were busy fermenting grapes. But today it was time to move them so I planned a big switch. And it went about as well as most best laid plans do. Eventually the grape wine ended up in a carboy(guess who is really bad at decanting from one container to the other) and it was time for a cleaning party. Of course most wine making equipment is too large to fit in the sink so you end up trying to make do. Finally the equipment was cleaned but you aren't done.

The next step is sterilizing. Ignore this step at your peril. If the contaminates are not properly controlled you may end up with off tasting wine or, horror of horrors, vinegar instead of wine. So you sterilize.

And next for the wild plums.

I'm going to save time and tell you that I eventually cleaned, pitted and pureed those wild plums and not go into it. Just know that THIS step is why it was a long day. Happily the wild plums are started on their journey of change into wine that will culminate about a year from now.

The result of all this wine action is that I spent pretty much the entire day in the kitchen working on it. The kids had an unprecedented opportunity to watch TV. Karla had started Aristocats on the 3rd time around before I noticed and put a stop to it. Karla and Gabe were unparalleled in opportunistic mischief. By the time baths rolled around this evening Gabe was only dressed in a pull-up (why yes, today was a wonderful day to introduce potty training too) and covered in orange and blue marker.

Well it was snack time...maybe he was just hungry for butter!