I made potato-cheese casserole last night for dinner. Normally this requires potatoes, cheese, broccoli or green onions or neither or both (broccoli in this case), and cream of onion soup. Last night, I started the potatoes boiling and grated the cheese and then realized that I had no cream of onion soup. So I made my own, of sorts--it was more of a gravy or a roux, but it worked quite well, and it was interesting to see the cumulation of twenty years of watching my mother cook, then assisting, then doing it myself staring up at me from the pan. The casserole tasted fine.

My dad e-mailed me a news item about Rowling declaring that Dumbledore was gay and said he was disappointed in her. I contended it might not have been a political statement, maybe that was just her backstory for him; but I'm afraid of what this means about his own views.

I'm feeling very quietly discontented with my life. Not that this is anything new; but I wonder what it'll take to stop it. Moving? I've been here two years now.

I did pumpkin-carving at the local Metropark yesterday, for the Ghosts of Providence program. I'm also going to be leading lantern tours on Friday. I've never seen the program before, so this should be fun. Afterwards I went to Andersons for produce and another wintergreen plant, and found that they have any number of potted citrus trees. I was tempted by the kumquat or the minneola--but not $60 worth.

I also stopped at a farmer's stand that I've been meaning to stop at every time I go out to the Metropark. All their summer produce is gone, of course; I wish I'd visited earlier. But they had very nice pumpkins and squashes, and lots of apples. I bought a buttercup and an ambercup squash (the latter purely because it's pretty) and I'll have to figure out what to do with them...later, though, as I accidentally nicked one of my four homegrown butternut squash later that night, so I'll be making roasted-squash-and-bean soup tonight.

I'm due to make apple butter and apple cider jelly this week as well...also stock, from the bag of vegetable leavings I've been keeping in the freezer. I wonder how much or how little of this do-it-myself business I'll retain once I have kids.

In Jennifer Housewife news, my floors are shockingly dirty. Also the laundry is going slowly because a three-inch spider has taken up residence just beside the washer, and so I'm either making Eric load and unload the washer or moving very slowly with my eyes fixed on the spider the whole time. I suppose I could ask him to get rid of it, come to think of it, and that would speed things up.

The construction company was supposed to come and fix our driveway last week. But they didn't come and didn't call, so I left a nasty (well, nasty for me) voicemail today, and not long after the owner called to say he was very sorry and they would be out tomorrow. We'll see.

So here's my week's list:

-vacuum
-mop
-make apple butter
-make apple cider jelly
-make stock (broth really, I guess)
-use butternut squash
-finish B's bear
-finish C's glove
-transplant herbs and strawberries

Why is so much of that food-related? I must also take some walks...

Cold is coming.

It's going to be cold tomorrow. Midwest cold. Yesterday it was 90. Tomorrow it's supposed to be 50. "Sounds like Midwest weather to me," said my neighbor as he ripped out tomato plants. Then I confessed to taking some of his Garden Peach tomatoes--only the ones that had grown on my side of the fence, and he said early in the year I could have any I wanted--and went inside, my neighborly duties fulfilled for another day. I like the neighbors, but I have little social grace. I'm working on developing a good professional telephone personality, though.

We're supposed to go to Cedar Point this Saturday. It's pretty much our last chance, so cold won't stop us. (Besides, Shel and I got very warm matching jackets when we went to Costco.) Rain will, so I'm hoping it all comes early. I'll gladly use the umbrella and the coat now for some screams and french fries later.

The housewife thing is getting to me a bit. I'm trying to stick to the not-complaining thing...I had to resort to calling Bev last night, though. Only two months left. I tend not to wish my life away, but I'll be very glad when it's December.

Vaccinations for all

I've had a mildly sore throat--tickly, feels better when I drink a lot--for thirty-six hours now. I had a slight bout of sneezing yesterday morning, and a slight attack of body aches yesterday afternoon. Did I mention that Eric is sick? From his fourth day of teaching? I've clearly caught it from him, but the onset is so slow that I'm hopeful that either I'm merely being inoculated and showing some vaccination reactions, as it were, or that the cold itself will be very mild because my body's evidently had time to marshall its defenses. Eric is very bitter about this.

I have also already failed as a housewife. He has no more clean underwear. It's laundry night for me.

We went to dinner last night at a relatively new Italian place for Edith's birthday and Eric's sister's, and it was fantastic. The gelato and the cappuccino were the only things that weren't delicious, and since I don't drink cappuccino and there was birthday ice cream waiting at home, that wasn't a big deal.

The ice cream went over very well. I made it Tuesday night, since Eric was still sick. We had chocolate mint, chocolate orange, and peanut butter chocolate with Reese's cups. The chocolates were a little soft and the peanut butter a little hard (probably because I put in twice as much peanut butter as the Ben & Jerry's recipe recommended--the flavor wasn't too strong either), but they were a hit. Eric's brother-in-law--well, I guess he's mine too--suggested we sell our ice cream at the farmer's market and Eric was sorely tempted. We'd have to work on scoopability, but I could see it being a fun day if we did it. I've been wanting to get to that farmer's market.

Jennifer Housewife

Yesterday Eric stood in the kitchen with tears in his eyes, saying, "I'll be eighty-three before these kids are learning what they ought to be learning." We'd been talking about the curriculum he's been handed for a new class he's teaching, and how he regards it as grossly human-centered and inappropriate for a beginner's class. He has a book, Benchmarks, that he would love to have implemented, but right now, where he is, there's nothing he can do, and he hates it. And I saw, again, how impassioned he can be about the things he cares about, and how much he cares about teaching.

He is now working full-time, including teaching a class he's never taught before, and which he learned yesterday is full of brighter students than he thought he was getting. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; it just means he has to redo a bunch of work he's done on his lesson plans. He's also taking four graduate-level classes in the evenings. He is going to have a very busy semester.

I am now going to be solely responsible for dinner on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and primarily responsible on Mondays. (Tuesdays he has pizza with his gaming friends, and Fridays he has no classes.) I'm a little nervous about this. I've never been responsible for someone else's meals; up until now we've shared in the planning and cooking, not least because Eric is a picky eater and won't eat something if he's not in the mood for it. But if he's to get any decent nutrition this semester, I'm going to have to have food ready and he's going to have to eat it.

I have also--without mentioning it to him, because he balked enough at the dinner thing--decided that this semester, I will attempt to become his housewife. I will cook, and clean, and do the dishes, and pay the bills, and do the laundry, and buy the groceries, and try not to complain that he's not helping. I'm also nervous about this. For one thing, I'm terrible at not complaining. This is actually nontrivial; I don't like not talking about things, and it's liable to make me even more irritable than usual. But I think it has to be done. My schedule is much freer than his, so I can take on the additional work without trouble; and if I draw attention to it he's going to feel bad about putting it all on me, and his stress level is high enough without making it worse.

And yes, if I don't say anything, he probably won't notice. This is the guy who leaves empty boxes all over our pantry because it simply doesn't occur to him that taking the last can/bar/bottle/package means that the box no longer has a purpose.

So we'll see how this goes. In a way I'm kind of looking forward to it. There are lots of projects around the house that aren't getting done because they're our projects and we often find better things to do than put up shelves or organize old files; but if it's just me who's responsible, these things are more likely to be done because I'm less tolerant of clutter than he is and the sense of ownership isn't diffused. So maybe by Christmas we'll have a cleaner, more functional house. Or maybe we'll have the same house and two more frazzled people in it.