Domestic Debby

Hi all,

Housemom walked in on me this evening in the kitchen, grinding away making oat flour and using the cookbook holder (hangs from the cabinet) to read Brisingr simultaneously. She immediately exclaimed over how domestic I'd been today. Although I've done this several times now, I'd never had such a party. My workmaster dropped off our milk can (whoops. but not my bad this time...), stayed to chat and try out the grinding and grab some hummus, two staff kids/teens came by and also had to join in and so we had a lively gathering.

And after hot cocoa we ended up having a balloon war. It was hysterically funny, with the balloon careening around the kitchen catching everyone unawares, even Connie was in peals of laughter. A fun, and very silly, 15 minutes!

But back to the beginning of the day...

This morning housemom finally realized that when I said "tomorrow" I meant that today I would start in the stain glass shop (I'd told her last week too about the possibility...). It wasn't a problem, and I got to the shop on time. I spent the beginning time helping a villager put together what will become a mosaic. There's this great looking owl, and I pieced it together over the wood board with an outline to guide me and glued it in place. Then I learned how to cut glass...what a humbling experience!

It requires a lot of finesse, since the "blade" is a rotating wheel set in a pen. You have to press just hard enough to sound like you're ripping silk. I didn't manage to do it once properly, although it still cut. Then you have to grasp with pliers along the edge and bend to get it to snap off cleanly. This, of course, didn't go so well. Luckily, the workmasters (a married couple) were very supportive and just laughed off my mistakes and encouraged me to keep going and helping out occasionally. After cutting the long strips off a flat plane of glass, I had to score them into cubes to make the tiles. The male workmaster just snapped them off by hand, which was a challenge...until one decided to go into my hand. I stared at the thin line and thought "huh. I would've thought that would make me bleed..." and then the blood came.

Not the best way to end the day. It's not a serious cut, but it is on the finger used for pressure for the cutting. Nicely done, right? Well, hopefully it will be mostly healed up by next Tuesday...

So, I was very pumped up afterward and enjoyed lunch and rest hour. Although I spent most of rest hour planting mint that Sam had brought home - extra cuttings from the garden. Now we'll see if it'll grow. On a more positive note, the seed tray has started to show some signs of life, and I'm sure that after tomorrow most of of the spots will have tiny sprouts poking out to meet the world.

Tomorrow will be a big day for cooking - spaghetti with meatballs from a family recipe. PLUS some french baguettes...yum!
(IF all goes well..cross fingers out there...)

Hope all is well,
Steph

PS - Congrats to my youngest brother on reaching state speech!! Very proud!