Hi all,

It was a wet and rainy day today. Rather gloomy, and prone to sudden and sporadic showers that were just light enough to make wearing a raincoat barely worth it. This morning I used the leftovers (frozen) from my mushroom and barley soup to make a mushroom risotto. When Sam came to take a peek, he exclaimed in dismay: "Why is it purple?!?"

Well, from the red wine, of course. Although I was then told that risottos is made only with white wine, this was impossible as we only had red on hand. Not to mention that I'd made the soup with red wine, so it was more practical to continue with it. It turned out ok, a little gummy after setting, but had pretty good flavor. I also had to raid the seed room for cabbage, as the co-op's supplier didn't get their shipment of lettuce, and so neither did we. So, risotto and coleslaw for lunch!

After lunch I trekked over to the woodshop to meet Flo to work on the planters. He'd also made a box planter, although after putting some screws in (which went every which way...not looking too pretty at this point...), it isn't lining up right anymore. The one with the angles is looking pretty good, and hopefully they'll both be "finished" by Wednesday. As long as they hold dirt...

Our orientation outing was canceled due to the rain. We were apparently supposed to be scraping paint off of a building. One co-worker raised the question (finally) of why we were doing all these jobs - what did they have to do with "orientation"? So after a half an hour of some manual labor - we seemed to be getting farmed out for this a lot lately - we sat down and had a discussion over what we thought it should be like. It lacks cohesion and a purpose, and hasn't really helped to "orientate" us to anything. So hopefully this will prompt some changes.

Since housemom changed the seating arrangement, I've noticed how little she noticed how much and even how Maria interacts at the table. At dinner I always did a "1 piece of bread and then more after soup" since housemom is always talking about meeting nutrition requirements. So it was almost funny to see her struggling to get Maria to finish her bowl of soup after she'd let her have 2-3 pieces of bread first. Not to mention she was talking about how we have to maintain her weight, and I don't quite think she believed me when I was telling her how often I have to remind Maria to just eat. Her child-like wonder can get her so revved up on questions that she just doesn't think about it.

I'm a little irked that tomorrow I'm going to have to stay home so housemom can take her youngest into the ER. He's been having a reoccurring problem for the last 2-3 weeks (not life-threatening, but painful) and she should've done it then. It's probably petty to resent being kept from going to something I actually really look forward to (since I'm really starting to get into the real work at the stain glass workshop) and she treats it as though it's not important. Yet she's always going on about the value of work, no matter how small it is. Housedad has an appointment tomorrow himself, so you'd think that would somehow be able to work out. Apparently not. It's just frustrating that I have to keep picking up the pieces. It's clear that her children are her first priority, but that does shift a lot to me. Housedad and Sam share a lot of the work for their care, while I was pretty much taking sole care with Maria. It's true housemom does a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff, but it's sometimes hard not to feel as though I'm taken for granted.

I know it's great that I get to be out of the house at all in the mornings, but it's just disheartening to finally have a chance to do something I feel I can be passionate about and then get it taken away - it doesn't inspire confidence that I'll be able to stick with it.

Hope all is well,
Steph