Multitasking, sorting things out, travel

After feeding the animals and getting the garden trees watered, I got the tiny peaches we got this year and put them in pots on the stove to start cooking down so we could hopefully make jam our of them. Maybe it would be better to call the mash that resulted from the cooking effort preserves rather that jam since I was not able to separate the skins from the pulp or the juice There was not any juice at all in the tiny fruit. We burned a little bit of the peach mash in one pot because I was distracted by other thanks I took on while cooking the preserves. I started replacing the toilet as the mash – seeds and all – began to cook down. That all started about 5:15. I was washing the pots used in the process at 10 pm. I am not sure that the final product will be edible, but we gave it a shot. I ended up with two quarts and four half pints as well as a small plastic container of the preserves. If the whole batch is not worth keeping, I at least made an effort to re-coop some of our produce.

Meanwhile, I assembled the new toilet and removed to old one. It is a fairly simple process to make the exchange but with the back problems I have, that simple process is quite taxing. By the time I got done I was hurting pretty badly. It was not the kind of pain that required anything more than a good night’s sleep and a half a muscle relaxer. When I got everything bolted sown and hooked up, I filled the tank with water. I had one small leak at the base of the tank where it attaches to the bowl, but that was easily corrected. I had not been aggressive enough when tightening the bolts that attached the tank to the bowl. I am always hesitant to get them to tight to avoid cracking the tank during assembly. Now Mama has a toilet set up to accommodate her recovery – and it will service us for regular use as well. I probably should have shopped around more for the toilet, I might have been able to save a few dollars – but it is done now. And I will be able to recover over the next couple days.

Victoria is enjoying her time with her nieces and nephews. That adds to the push, or pull if you wish, to get Mama down to Honduras to visit her grandkids for herself. It will have to be a more carefully planned trip for the two of us, but I think Mama would be ready to go tomorrow if I announced that we could. For their part, Nate, Cori and the kids are ready at just about any time also. But for now, Mama and I are struggling through the morass of bills and insurance notices we are receiving concerning her most recent surgery. It is difficult to tell where it will all settle out but at the moment it looks like we owe between $10K and $12K. Not too overwhelming when the totals started out somewhere over $87K. Those of you who know how insurance works understand that it will be a couple more months before we know the real total. That is about the time we will start getting the bills and insurance notices for the second knee surgery. As I have said before, God has not run out of money and he has given me a good job to get me and Mama through this.

I will be traveling for work Monday and Tuesday. Look for me again Wednesday.