Autumn roundup

What've we been up to during the radio silence?

This kid turned 15, but that's another post altogether.

The garden went completely nuts with tomatoes so I had to make soup, many times. And since I save chicken bones in the freezer until they threaten to take over, I had the opportunity to make bone broth. 

I also found a red lentil dal recipe with zucchini that turned out amaaaaazing and I can't wait to make it again! Even Zita approved, so that's high praise, hehe.

Yes, we are Those People who've been caring for a sourdough starter throughout the pandemic, and can I just tell you that sourdough pancakes are wonderful?! The boys declared them, "too eggy" and refuse to eat them. Dada is back on a low carb diet, so guess who reaps the rewards of yumminess!? Helloooooo elastic waistbands.

In order to combat the expanding waistline, especially as all I see when I look down is belly because m'boobs are gone, I've been doing a fair amount of indoor cycling, yoga, and, ta-da, I bought running shoes! I know, right? You're all gasping in disbelief. Well, you better sit down for real, because I've actually run four times. Two of those times were by myself! We won't talk about my time or how I plot my route so that someone will find me in case I die, but I'm proud of myself. I am definitely a fair weather runner, though, so who knows if there will be anymore 2020 runs as it is now almost 9:30 in the morning and only 31 degrees. Not happenin'.

We had about four absolutely gorgeous, back up in the 70s, days in a row. I keep lamenting, "why don't we live in a place where the temps are like this all year round?" Dada laughs at me. I can't help myself. It's just so gorgeous and splendid to be able to be outside without the multiple layers that are coming!

Well, of course, this is Ohio, thus we have a screwball day thrown in there, too. 

So we've been up to a little of this, (see Damon?)

which led to a lot of that.

Damon was cajoled into dragging many, many tarp-loads of leaves to the curb with the excuse that he could count that as phys ed minutes for the log he's supposed to be keeping. Our teachers declared that since everyone is spending so much time online, they'd prefer special classes to be outside or otherwise offline. So we've done yard work, yard work, and more yard work. I'd much rather rake leaves than shovel snow, though I know that's coming. Most of our days working out there yielded tarpfuls of crispy, crunchy, light, dry leaves, for which I was thankful. There was still complaining, but less than there would have been otherwise, for sure, by all parties involved!

School has been chugging along with the expected good and bad days. Our district has been remote from the get-go and decided to stay that way for the indefinite future. A certain someone got ahead and then "forgot" to check their to-do list for three days and unsurprisingly ended up behind, someone else has had multiple close calls with due dates for projects that hadn't been thoroughly inspected before the due date and thus causes panic on the part of the parents. I don't know why, as it's not our grades, but I think that's been so deeply ingrained by this point that there's no turning back. Another certain someone is aggravated that nearly identical projects are being assigned for both art classes though one had been described as the end-all-and-be-all of art classes and deliberate scheduling had been taken all four years to get into said class. And so it goes. As Anne of Green Gables mused in a letter to Marilla, "the sun will go on rising and setting whether or not I pass geometry," or something very, very close to that.