putting up

Home today with sick (?) kindergartner.

Very slight fever.

Achy bones.

If I wasn't working, this would be a no brainer.

"He's just in kindergarten - let him stay home!"

I would say.

Now, I'm all about, "how sick are you?  

Do you think you could go in in a couple of hours?

Tomorrow you will go to school."

Doesn't help that the reaction I got from my boss was,

well,

less than positive

when I called in saying I couldn't come in.

But that's all I'm going to say about that.

So, I'm going to be productive today and continue working on my tomatoes.

I am elbow deep in tomatoes, thanks to a bumper crop at our friend's garden.

Today's mission?

More chili sauce.

I canned 22 pints of chili sauce yesterday (after working earlier in the day).

We like chili and have plenty of tomatoes, so I'll put up more.

I'll end the suspense at what I did on my "day off" on Monday.

Ready for it?

I went to 2 grocery stores.

I folded 5 baskets of laundry.

I picked the kids up from school at 1 pm (typical Mon release time).

Then, I took 1 child to a dr's appointment (football injury)

and

I worked 4 hours.

Yup, that's right.

I sort of forgot to add that I agreed to work "late Mondays" every other week.

At 2 pm, I wished I didn't have to go in.

And then the chaos started and I decided work needed me extra badly

so I headed in a tad early.

Thank God.

It was air conditioned.

It was quiet.  

People smiled when they saw me

and no one asked for demanded a snack,

or water,

or to get their turn on the computer,

and no one, not one person, yelled at me. 

I didn't want to leave.

I'll end with some photos from my canning escapes over Labor Day weekend.

Actually, in the spirit of accurate reporting,

Bob did a bunch of the canning because I was nursing a sore back.

Here's my outfit for the day (love my apron!)

Here are the tomatoes, taking a little bath.

And here they are, peeled and reading for canning.

I realize it would make sense to have a picture of the final product

but why start making sense now?

We ended up canning about 20 quarts of whole tomatoes.

have a good day, my friends!