Wellllllll

My busyness continues. I agreed to work one extra week at O's, as the management change doesn't actually happen until the 8th. I have already put in more than 40 hours this week- tomorrow ending the work week- and tomorrow will be as long as I can stand. I discovered in trying to complete the tool aisle planogram... it involved TWO sections more than I realized. I haven't even FINISHED the ones I knew about, which were due today. Freight has been crazy heavy all week. Small mistakes in ordering fixtures cost time here and there. (A 3' bar was ordered when a 4' was needed. Ran out of 15" deep shelves...)
So, while I agreed to work next week, it is also to my benefit, as I am grandfathered into holiday pay as a part-timer. (New part timers do not get 1.5 holiday pay.) There is no freight scheduled for Tuesday, as the drivers have Monday off. If I am not caught up tomorrow... and there is no realistic way I can be, I can CHOOSE a day to come in and just work planograms. If I choose Monday... guess what? It is time and a half scale! I already have prior approval of both the exiting manager and the acting manager to work any of those days I chose. The new manager coming in.. (Tim) was there today. He didn't veto my working the holiday. :)

Here at home... the local apple trees have been dispersing their fruits. Two days ago (or was it three) I had noticed plum trees with ripening fruits along my drive home. I asked Sam (who was off until 1:00 the next day) if he would mind picking me enough plums for one batch of plum jelly. These plums are different than the ones we had in Marlow. Those plums ripened in late May to early June, these plums are just NOW coming ripe. In the 10 years we have lived here, I have never noticed them before!
So... Coming home from work, I saw the plum trees were just as laden as they had been the day before. I figured Sam had been called in to work, or else forgotten my request. So I stopped and picked enough for a batch of wild plum jelly.

Dan passed me picking plums on his way home from the Wooden Spoon. We waved. I got home and started my plum jelly. The phone rang. It was Sam, asking that Daniel bring their backpacks and come get apples, which had been a canning goal of ours for weeks. Dan picked up one backpack, to learn it was FULL of wild plums. Sam had not forgotten at all. My first batch of wild plum jelly yielded 10, half pints.
The boys brought in apples. And more apples. AND MORE APPLES. They stopped at just over 2 bushels that day. So after the plum jelly, I got a pot of applesauce going, as well as a slow cooker batch of apple butter.
The next day, I had to can the apple butter. Tasting it, it was sour! I added some blackstrap molasses. Sam was leery... he said blackstrap has such a strong taste I probably ruined my batch of apple butter. Tasting it, his eyes lit up. He says it tastes like liquid gingerbread!
While he was at work, he mentioned the abundance of apples... and managed to borrow an antique (over 100 years old) cider press! So last night, I did another batch of applesauce, another batch of apple butter, a double batch of wild plum jelly... and the boys have thus far done about 5 gallons of hand pressed apple cider. (I have 30 jars of wild plum jelly (half pint), twelve pints of applesauce, two pints and six half pints of apple butter... and nearly a bushel of already harvested apples to go.)
I declared tonight a night of rest... NOT dealing with fruits.
Of course, it is now suppertime. I'm so tired, I have NO CLUE what I am making for supper... but the kitchen is cleaned, the sticky apple residue washed from the floors, and laundry and the dishwasher running.
Have a blessed night!
Keep praying about a good job for me!
~Tammy~