Turnover rate

I made apple butter and apple turnovers yesterday. The turnovers were something I'd never tried before, but I've been looking for something to replace the Fudgy Rounds Eric loves to take to work with him and I had lots of apples, so I gave them a shot. They're good. Eric loved them. "We should take some to the mothers," I said. "We could take them the recipe," he said.

Today, I made more. The original recipe only made eight, and we gave three to the mothers and sampled three more throughout the day. Eric brought one to work for after his faculty meeting and told me he was daydreaming about it halfway through the meeting. Who knew that handheld apple pies would be such a hit?

I tried out a cooked filling this time, because if it works well we're going to can a bunch of filling for later use. The first batch also had quite a few split seams and runny spots, so I took more care shaping the turnovers this time, pressing the crust together and crimping it carefully with a fork, then carefully trimming the edges away. I couldn't shake the feeling that I get once in a while since I got married, that this is something I'm going to be doing a lot in the coming years, that what I'm doing now is the foundation of a family tradition in the future. It's a strange feeling. But I like it.

The fish are being fed.

I'm back from Seattle. Seattle was beautiful. Not too hot, not muggy, clear days, Mom's roses in bloom and strawberries ripe. The trip was partly a visiting-family trip and partly a show-Eric-that-Washington-isn't-always-gray-and-raining trip, and went well on both fronts. We went to Leavenworth (a little Bavarian tourist town in the Cascades) and Pike Place Market, and rode the ferry across the Sound to Bremerton, which is a sleepy little military town Eric says might not be bad for moving to, and spent a day with my aunts and cousins (and one uncle-in-law). We brought a bunch of apartment and real estate guides back with us. Later I'll get Bev to send us some for northern Oregon. Now that Eric's got a job, and I have a strong possibility of having regular telecommuting work, there's every chance that we'll be able to move out there next summer as planned.

In the meantime, I’m working on strengthening that possibility of mine. I've been reading about freelancing, about copywriting and articles and marketing and so on and so forth. I'm very hesitant to talk about it--either because I feel I don't know enough or because I feel sure to fail, I'm not certain which. But I'm working on it. Ideally, I'll work on the freelancing I've got, and getting more, in the evenings, and do my work as efficiently as possible during the day so that I can get to my fiction at lunch and during down times. We'll see how that goes. Now that Dad's quilt is done (and he loved it--especially since, in his words, it represents about twenty years of his life) I need to finish our summer quilt, and then I'm putting the sewing machine away until I need to make curtains in the fall. --Well, that and a baby blanket for a friend of mine, but again, not until fall.

I talked to Eric about the freelancing last night; business and names and so on. And I mentioned the idea that my current client might offer me a full-time job in a year or so, and said, "But I don't think I would want to do that. It's nice work, but it's not ultimately what I want to do. I'm twenty-eight years old, and it's time I started working on a career I love, not just a job to keep me employed." I really do feel that way. I don't regret the things I've done so far, but it's time to start working on something that makes me happy rather than something that makes me secure. (Maslow's hierarchy, dontchaknow.) We have a book on starting a small business. It's a very comprehensive book that we bought when we were talking about someday opening The Book Club, and I enjoyed reading it because using any of the information in it was in no way a part of our actual plan. It's different reading this book now. Not bad, but different.

In the meantime, we're going to a Jonathan Coulton concert tonight. This should be pretty awesome. Also awesome: it's almost the weekend already.