Update with enough apples

Life continues to be rich and full here in Enoughsville. This week, it feels like a theme might be "If life gives you apples, make applesauce" . . . although maybe it just feels like that because I just finished turning three bags of apples into 33 quarts of applesauce. 

Behold the bags:  June-my-running-buddy picks them up from a local orchard.  

In giant plastic bags, alas. 
Someday I'll figure out how to get this in reusable cloth . . .

I've started keeping stats on this process.  

year	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022
# bags	3	3	4	6	3
date	Oct 17	Oct 26	Oct 12	Oct 23	Oct 25
cost			$30	$54	$45
people who helped	Mary, Beth	Mary	me, Nelson, Ofsnough	me, Inkling, Mary	just me
time	3.5 hours	3 hours	4.5 hours	5.5 hours	5 hours
quantity, me	3 quarts applesauce, 15 qts sliced apples, 4 qts juice	17 qts applesauce	36 qts and 6 pts applesauce	43 quarts, 14 pts	33 quarts
quantity, for others	20 3/4-pt jars	12 3/4-pt jars		24 pts
notes to self	and lots of apples left!	baking applies in the oven better than cooking on stove	also 4 gallons vinegar	instant pots are amazing: steam 1 minute	yes instant pots! make great applesauce

So, this year, after 5 hours of chopping and instant-potting and immersion-blendering and boiling, this is what the three bags of apples turned into. 

What an array!

From this angle, it looks like it goes on forever . . . 

And up close, close enough to feel the heat radiate
as the jars cool.

I've also made something other than lemonade from lemons that life gave me:  brined lemons.  I had been searching around for a way to make the lemons and limes last longer after our annual Pirate Dinner.  (We get them for the Pirate Dinner to help prevent scurvy, of course, but people don't eat them, so they mostly serve as decoration and conversation pieces.  If you get scurvy, don't blame me!).  I found a recipe for "preserved lemons" that reminds me a lot of making sauerkraut, but with lemons instead of cabbage: basically, chop the lemons, coat them in salt, and submerge for a while.  The result is a really interesting condiment: more like olives than like what I normally think of as fruit, but I like it.

Preserved lemons, very briny.

And pretty, too.

Alas, here is a metaphorical lemon that I don't have any idea how to make palatable: the terrible situation in Haiti.  I read vague news reports of mayhem and request for outside help.   I also keep in contact with Xavier, and his WhatsApp messages are believable (given the news) and incomprehensibly horrible, especially compared to my own cushy life.

I mentioned to him that Kinderling is very close to having her third child.  

X:  Hi mommy. It's great to hear that you are doing well!! And I see Kinderling on Facebook. That's a blessing for her mom. May God continue to bless her. For me, down here things are going crazy here.

Me: What's happening?

X:  Mom! Haiti is about to come by its finishing, mom. No one can survive the country. Have about six, almost 7,  month lock. We can't find gas, food or more right now we can't find water. Everything's are expensive – no school, nothing, work everything closed.

Me:  That's so hard. I remember how precious water was when I visited. I'm sorry it's worse now.

X:  Mom!! Things are going worst. We can't even go out. Every day, tires are burning in the whole country. I feel like it's the last year for us to leave. As I tell you, nothing work, people are starting to die by anger, almost all the people start to leave the country. Things are going crazy, mom; people are shooting people. Worst things mom.

Me: This hurts me to hear. I believe you. It must be scary. 

 

X: not only scary mom, more than that, mommy. I don't know what to do.

So, I get these messages and feel bad for Xavier (and everyone in Haiti, really), and remember to be extra grateful for the miracle of clean water and streets without burning tires and light switches and the incredible blessing of being able to spend 5 hours on an October Saturday making applesauce that I'll get to enjoy all year.  

And here is even more to be grateful for: Nelson called (as he does most Saturdays).  He is very happy because his glucose numbers continue to come down, which is good in-and-of-itself, but is even more encouraging because it is a sign that he's doing a better job of making wise life choices.   He says he's been realizing that he asks himself, "WWMS?" (What would Mom say?).   I thought that was especially lovely, and asked him what he answers:  what would mom say?  He says, "Don't give up; keep up the hard work, and keep going."  I like that:  he's got a pretty danged good mom, I think!

And to put the cherry (or preserved lemon) on the top, he's found that on November 8 he'll be able to start signing up for group homes.   We don't know yet when he'll actually get to move in, but it's nice to have the hope and encouragement that comes with this next step.   I love hearing the smiles in his voice -- we agreed that next week, we'll try to zoom so we can see faces.  

OfSnough has spent much of this week in Boston at the IEEE meeting; I'm looking forward to seeing him again soon, if only briefly:  I think his next trip is Tuesday, to France.   Ah, well, more applesauce for me!

And that's the news from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our adventures.  May you and yours live apple-y ever after.

The best part of the playground this weekend

 On Sunday at the giant playground in our park, the coolest piece of play equipment was not the slides, 

or the bridges, not the sliding poles or the monkey bars, not the tunnels or the steering wheels, 

but a giant maple tree that dropped its leaves down all around it. It was like a sandbox or a throw rug, 

but made of leaves, and the children gravitated to it making giant piles, 

throwing the leaves in the air to make it rain confetti colors all around them, 

carrying giant arm loads over to toss at the bigger kids.

hasty update, with a trash can

 Life continues to be rich and full here in Enoughsville.  This past weekend was family/alumni weekend at my college; between that and TWO theater events I went to, my weekend hours got gobbled up, so this will be a bit of a hasty, canned update.  

Speaking of cans, here's our trash can at the curb.   My guy took this photo and sent it to me, saying it feels like a scary photo.  Scary, because Halloween and dark, but also because this is trash can #2 for 2022.  

Ahhh!  A garbage can at the curb!!

Also scary:  aliens abducting cows.   Yes, we live in this kind of dangerous neighborhood. 

Not quite as scary, but still impressive:  the tree outside my office looks like exploding fireworks.

Not really exploding, but it kind of looks like it.

  

Here's an update from Inking, who read last week's letter about animals, and added her own adventures to the story.  

I also had some animal adventures last week. I went up to Rhinebeck (aka the New York Sheep and Wool Festival!) I saw sheep and goats and llamas and people and yarn! (I know that last thing isn't an animal, but it's *from* animals).

It was a fantastic trip! 

I won't send you all the pictures, just the animals and one of my newly finished sweater. (Yay! I finished my Rhinebeck Sweater in time! And the weather was cool enough that I could wear it!)

I had an absolute blast seeing friends and strangers and yarn celebrities! 

 

Keeping an eye out for aliens who might abduct us.

On Wednesday (before I left for Rhinebeck) I went to see Kinky Boots again. I sat in the front row and played one of my favorite games: Be The Most Excited Person in the Audience! It's like your airport game. The cast did notice and appreciate my energy, so that was a success!

Back to me:  Since I'm all tied up in work these days, I thought I might also share a photo of Prewash getting entangled in her engagements.  

Last but not least, a bit of cheerful mathematics, courtesy of a visit from Achild (who was one of my theater partners for one of my two shows this week).  

And that's a very quick update (if you can even call it that) from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our adventures.  May you and yours enjoy exploding fire trees, too.

A tour of the cow shelves

 As the cow shelves are now in place and properly festooned with cows, I thought I might allow for a quick tour of the contents.

I have a lot of cows, and they are all (ALL) gifts: people say, "I saw this cow, and I thought of you!", so I add it to the collection.  When I started changing offices a few years back, I realized I couldn't keep them there anymore, so I moved many (but by no means all) of my cows to my front porch.  They took over the space, and became a bit of a tourist attraction.

Of all the cows I have, the ones below are the reason that I decided to build a set of cow shelves:  a neighbor who doesn't know me except to walk by and say "hi" gifted me with an adorable, tiny cow-themed tea set. Together, they're small enough to fit in the palm of one hand, and I was worried they'd get lost and overlooked in the melee that had become my front porch.  About a year ago, the idea of cow shelves planted itself in my brain.

The cows that needed a nice home
and a good place for a spot (heh) of tea.

Coming up with good material for the shelves was the next adventure.  Finding the time to build the shelves turned out to be much less of a problem than I thought it would be: once I found the right lumber, I kind of couldn't keep myself out of the basement, because I was so jazzed about putting this all together.  In fact, now that the shelves are done I keep wandering down to the basement and realizing that there's no projects I'm working on right now, darn it!  I think I need to come up with something good soon.

At any rate, back to the cow shelves: as fall was starting to poke its head around the corner, I was thinking I needed to get serious about making sense of the too-short, too-wide boards in my basement if the cow shelves were going to become a reality before winter lumbered in (heh, lumbered; didn't mean to do that one).   And then, I did my usual post-dinner walk-around-the-block on a trash day, and saw someone had put out a the curb an answer to my prayers.  What had seemed to the put-ers to be a set of no-longer-needed bed slats were, secretly and in disguise, actually the perfect material for a set of cow shelves that fit snugly in my front window, locking in almost with tetris-like efficiency. Whoop!

I think I spotted a cow shelf!

A bunch of white paint that the previous house owners had left behind (and that was starting to glom up, so clearly needing to be used) turned out to be excellent for most of the decoration; a bit of chalkboard paint and purple paint from previous construction and decoration adventures allowed me to add spots.

The hardware (screws, nails, and one or two hooks) was also scavenged from other projects.  I debated adding more shelves for more cows to sit on, but then decided I liked the idea of suspended cows even more.  This leaves open space in the middle of each shelf, and also adds to the kookiness quite appropriately, I think.

These jars remind me of the awesome and iconic Gary Larson Far Side comic panel, showing "Wildlife Preserves".  

Since I didn't want my cow shelves to be like everybody else's cow shelves (as my husband keeps quipping), I enjoyed adding some other quirky elements.  I mean, quirky beyond just the fact that there are dozens and dozens of cows, and that some of the spots are purple spots, and that there are cows in jars.  I wanted to add "pass throughs", and might add more of these later, but for now, there's a lone cow-head-pencil that pokes through one set of shelving. 

The pencil cow is just passing through . . . 

There's a cow broom, and a drawing of cows done from my granddaughter's thumb prints. 

. . . and more cows hanging and sitting around.

Up above, there is a cow garland.  The "rope" is made from a strip that was supposed to wrap around a large computer monitor (someone gave me that about three decades ago, long long before laptops ruled my world), and then I safety pinned lots of other stuffed cows to it.  

The cow garland hangs above.
The "I heart cows" sign was a Christmas gift, too.   

And probably there are more cows that I didn't photograph, but I think this is enough to give the basic idea of how much fun I'm having with the way my porch is shaping up these days.  

Contemplative cow.  

Enough animals update

Life continues to be rich and full in Enoughsville. This week, I have been particularly rich in animal experiences.

There's a park near me where every spring I get to see the First Robin of Spring – rather, the first Invading Robin Horde of Spring, because they travel in large flocks and take over the area. This past week I got to see the Last Robins of Fall, apparently; they were partying in the park, appreciating recent rains and the chance to take turns doing the splish-splash-I-was-taking-a-bath song.

Then I imitated the robins and flew south myself, winding up in Texas.

People sitting in the airport were grumpy. 
People working outside were animated and seemed happy.
"Motion is lotion," my friend tells me.

On the flight down, I heard back from the journal where I had submitted my revision just six days before. In the fastest turnaround I have ever seen, or likely ever will see, my paper was accepted. Wow! That was a wonderful way to start the week off happy. I got to tool around Baylor University, which is a really lovely campus. I got to see their resident bear, and to give a math talk. The bear slept through my talk, as you can see, but fortunately not all of the students did, and so we had a lot of fun together.

Arrow points to where the bear is sleeping.

Yup, really sleepy.

While I was gone, Ofsnuff outsourced the torture of our dog, taking Prewash to the vet to get the goop in her ears. When I got back home, I got to DIY the dog torture again; she's getting better about me putting goop in her ears, although still not great; the good news is that it seems to be working, so that whether or not she's better at goop acceptance, her ears are better at being regular old dog ears.

"If I create a moat of volleyball scraps, 
will that keep your torture device away from my ears?"

Building on dog success, I also finally built and installed the cow shelves. They look really good (I say in my biased opinion, but also in the opinion of many passersby who stop to compliment me and sometimes to take photographs). There are still a few cows in the washing machine that I need to add to the display, but it's essentially done, and is a very happy little spot on this block.

Very early in the week, even before I jumped on my plane, we had a nice visit from Gosling and Colin. Colin seems to fit right in to the family routine, gamely playing along when we brought out the Boggle set after waffles and playing five rounds with us as we mopped up words left and right; he and Gosling walked around the campus with us afterward and took time to smell the roses; they offered me gratuitous and enthusiastic advice on Cow Shelf Bling. 

There are six of us in the photo, if you count Nelson
(who is on the phone with OfSnough).

My students are recovering from the midterm that I just gave; two of them have decided to withdraw and focus on other classes, but others have decided to rethink how they study and practice problems, and I've offered them my enthusiastic support and encouragement.  So, onward toward the chain rule and optimization problems, we go!

And that's the news from our family (and from a bunch of animals we've encountered), all of whom continue to be rich in our adventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.

Take THAT, you dastardly volleyball!

The soccer ball was the first that needed to be taken into pieces. Each of those little hexagons clearly needed to be separated from its hexagonal or pentagonal neighbor.  

There is a mathematical theorem:  you can tile a flat plane with hexagons, but not with regular pentagons.  The deconstruction of the soccer ball into nearly flat pieces was clearly my dog's attempt to recreate the proof of that theorem. 

Once the rubber sac inside the ball starts to peek through a hole, it is imperative that the entire sac be removed, even if such a surgery requires pulverization along the way.  The same operation follows for the volleyballs, naturally: let us not play favorites when it comes to sports. Any ball that has seams can be un-seamed, is the way Prewash sees it.

What I find most amazing about this photo, really, is the pair of shoes barely visible in the top left corner, which are left perfectly unmolested.  This dog has been the least destructive of personal property that I've ever owned.  Half a decade ago, she ate a toilet plunger, it's true -- but she hasn't touched shoes or socks or gloves; she doesn't snatch food off the table; she doesn't even jump on the furniture.  

Volleyballs that find their way into the home, on the other hand: their days are numbered here.

Small airport adventure

I wore just the right slip-on/slip-off boots for getting through TSA. 

But my hand-knitted, beaded socks meant that I was pulled over so my ankles could be patted down.

Aside from that, my trip so far is going well.  I love doing work in airports, especially small regional airports.

Update with windy beaches, potential housing, and math

Life continues to be rich and full here in Enoughsville. This was the week before fall break, and I resubmitted a paper as well as giving and then grading an exam, so my brain is kind of full of math. I have been head-down, plowing forward, mostly ignoring everything else.

Fortunately, everything else has not been ignoring me, so I've gotten a couple of nice updates from others. One set of these came from Inkling, who took a knitting trip to the beach.

Inkling:  "This is not good beach weather (but the wind is very exciting)"

This is the kind of knitting trip where you gather for a reunion with friends who went to Ireland together years before, and where one of the women who comes along just happens to make hats for everybody there. It was that kind of trip, and Inkling had a wonderful time. She also had a spare key at my house, which used to get back into her own house when she returned safely at the end of that trip.

Seven heads are better than one, 
especially when you're a knitter at a windy beach.

In spite of all of Inkling's jollifications, Nelson wins this week's award for the cheeriest set of updates, and Sizzling naturally earns the Assist.  He tells me he's getting close to identifying the group home where he'll get to live, probably with 2-3 other guys with his kind of disabilities.  It'll be 30-60 days before he gets that housing, and along with that, he will also get a long-term social worker.  That's housing:  in the transportation arena, he's had successful adventures in riding the bus and making transfers for the first time.  And even more exciting . . . he and Sizzling might possibly have found a way to contact his birth mom.  He's super, super jazzed about that, as well he should be.  I'm crossing fingers that will work out.

Gosling is in town, visiting and she's met up with my guy, and she's coming over for waffles tomorrow.  I'm quite excited about seeing her again and hearing about life in general.  Ofsnough is doing his usual bopping from here to his protests and volunteer gigs, and this weekend he added a 50th high school reunion into the mix, for good measure.

As for me, I said I resubmitted a paper this week, and that was fun.  A good half-of-day went into creating this figure, which kind of delights me.

I have also been trying hard not to spend too much time on this diagram below, related to a completely different project, because every time I start playing with it I get absorbed and then all of a sudden the sun has set and the shopkeepers are rolling the awnings down and I still have a pile of memos begging to be written.

This is a non-concurrent force-to-funicular correlation,
in case you were wondering.  I suspect there are errors
in the diagram because the cross-ratio is off.

And then, also, this week was our first calculus midterm.  I've spent much of the semester so far sharing stories about resilience: telling stories of mathematicians I know who nearly dropped out and then who went on to do amazing things.  But then I gave the midterm and had something like 10% of my class just fail it, and in some back corner of my brain I'm kind of thinking that maybe my students ought to go be resilient in some other person's class, perhaps?  On the one hand, I really am trying to teach the students I have -- not the students I want; on the other hand, when we sit down in office hours, some of them laboriously compute 3*21, and eventually get 53; we try adding 1/2 + 1, and they can't understand why I turn the "1" into a "2/2".  It's hard to get from there to the place where they can multiply by the conjugate or take derivatives of complicated functions.  Sigh.

Having said that, I gave the exam.  I graded it.  I wrote to the students who did poorly with a heads-up email ("you didn't do as well as either you or I would like"), and I've set up appointment slots for them to come see me after fall break.  Some of the students will undoubtedly rally and figure out how to rise like a phoenix, and other students will undoubtedly decide that calculus is a hill they'll climb some other semester.  

And me, I'm going to write memos, and also get on a plane to go talk about math somewhere else, and then I'll come back and teach (most of) my students the product and quotient rules for derivatives.  And that's the news from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our adventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.