Pickles, pickles, everywhere...

...and I don't even eat them! Tonight is day 4 of pickle-making...I have 11 jars of sweet relish, 7 quarts of giant dills, 20 pints of smaller dills (spears and chips). I think I'll go ahead and make something else with the cucumbers. Oh! Wait! There isn't anything else you can make with pickles. (Besides fresh in salads!)

I'm going to experiment tonight with some spicy relish for hot dogs. Less sugar, some hot peppers. The cool thing is these will all have homegrown onions and peppers! I have 22 cucumbers to use tonight. That's still saving some for tomorrow's salad.

I wish the tomatoes would turn red so I can make homemade sauce to can. I much prefer canning foods I'll actually eat. :-)

Tonight was supposed to be a writing night, but challenge soccer was canceled. I'll never get anything written while three Rouskateers pack for summer camp! It will be nice while they're gone. Jeff and I will be celebrating 16 years a few days after our anniversary so we can do so on a night sans children.

Too busy for trolls

Well, I've been too busy for trolls. With only 1 workday this year, we had to get everything done before summer in the library. That took awhile with inventory, shelf order, weeding the collection, fixed asset reports, media reports, etc. On top of that, I've already completed 3 rounds of canning...and it's not even the middle of June! We have green beans in the freezer, squash to be frozen tomorrow, and enough dill pickles to rival the grocery store shelves. Honest! One cabinet in the kitchen that used to hold the corning ware dishes is stuffed full of pickle jars! I made relish tonight for the first time. It tasted good; I just hope it cans well.

This, of course, means the trolls are still on their quest and there's no end in sight for them. :-(

Busy, busy month

This month is busy with everything going on at school...collecting overdue books/fines, inventory, collecting overdue books/fines, getting equipment in, collecting overdue books/fines, administering tests, collecting over...you get the picture! Half of everyday is spent going room to room to make children turn in books due 2 weeks ago!

I haven't had time to write anything about trolls lately. I have more things in my brain than time to get on paper (or in the computer. Same thing!). I need to get those trolls out of the woods, but then I got a really cool idea for a book about a "gift" (curse?) and how this thirteen year-old deals with it. Of course, I've been working with my other novel on Authonomy, which takes a lot of time. Right now it's #323, which is great! It keeps moving up in the rankings and, if it gets in the top 5, maybe an editor at Harper Collins will review it. Then there's the synopsis I'm working on to submit the same novel to the Delacorte/Yearling contest. It's due before the end of June, so I've got to finish it soon and mail it off.

At least the last of the projects are done, Girl Scout meetings are planned through June 15 (last meeting and the bridging ceremony), and the laundry is all done! (The last is remarkable, I know!)

My plan for the summer is to get those trolls moving faster, scan photos from old albums into the computer, clean out 2 closets, and finally fix the problem with my original novel (that has set on the shelf for 6 years because I couldn't figure out how to do what the publisher advised me to do!). Whew! How many weeks are there in summer vacation? Probably not enough!