Day 160: Homemade Butter, Art

We woke up bright and early at the creek. The creek is a lovely place to camp, but the only place to pitch a tent is on solid bedrock, so even with a nice sleeping pad it is a bit rough. You have to match your shoulders, elbows, and hips to the rock's divots. I spent the night rotating from front to side to back to other side, rotisserie sleeping. 

Jeremy was up first and had made coffee by the time I unzipped myself from my cocoon. He had already gone up to the house wrapped in nothing but a blanket to get clothes that were seed-tick-free. Camping this close to home does have its benefits. I got my cup of coffee but had a only a few sips before the kids woke up immediately demanding to go straight back to the house. Since it was a mere sixty-two degrees, Taiya declared that she was FREEZING and was basically succumbing to hypothermia right there in front of us. My children are such southerners! 

Still-half-asleep William in Christmas pajamas.

We decamped and went back to the house for the day, abandoning the peace and tranquility of outdoors for screens. Taiya is hooked on She-Ra, and William on toy-related shows on YouTube. I let them watch for a good portion of the day. I kept checking in on them and asking if they wanted to go swimming, go back to the creek, go to the farm, but they just wanted to keep watching their shows. I figured since this was their last weekend before school started I would let them indulge. It meant I could get caught up on some work I wanted to do. More cleaning, a grocery order to pick up, laundry, etc. 

One task Jeremy and I tackled was dealing with three quarts of heavy cream we'd been given. As the age-old expression says, when life gives you three quarts of heavy cream and you're lactose intolerant, make butter! That is how it goes, right? We have an antique electric butter churn that was given to us by Jeremy's stepdad's mother, Nell, which we never had occasion to use but we kept in the back room just in case. We filled the churn up to the handy fill-line on the jar and plugged it in. It was surprisingly quiet. The cream first turned to whipped cream, then to chunky whipped cream, then to butter. The motor got hot and smelled like old sewing machine by the time it finished. We ended up with about two pounds of butter which we lightly salted and then froze for safe-keeping. We kept one container's-worth in the fridge and then just had to make biscuits to go with the fresh butter. 

Another fun task I was able to do today was to hang up paintings over my beautiful new couch. Having the good fortune to come from a family of artists, I had a lot of paintings on hand. Having the bad fortune of building my house out of cinder blocks, it has made hanging pictures quite difficult. But I discovered the power of super-strong double-sided tape recently, and the light bulb went off. I now have paintings by my mother and brother hung over the couch, and every time I look at them I feel happy. Taiya added one of her own too, and I think it complements the gallery beautifully. 

I've been doing my best to ignore the news, because it's mostly bad and I'm just counting down the days until the November election. The virtual Democratic National Convention is over, and I heard that the speeches were good, so I'm cautiously optimistic about the future. I bought a couple sheets of stamps to support the USPS, and my hope is that our election won't be derailed by the greedy and corrupt so we can usher in a better old white man to the presidency, with an African American and Indian American woman vice president. Kamala won me over during the Kavanaugh hearings, so I'm pretty excited about her getting chosen for VP. Meanwhile, California is on fire, two hurricanes are headed toward the Gulf Coast, the Arctic is melting, and countless other catastrophes are unfolding. And remote schooling starts in two days. But we have plenty of butter on hand now, and art on the wall, so I can face all the world's troubles with fortitude.