Week in Review

A quick recap on the week:

Monday — arrive home from the ranch, start working on photos and preparing for the week. Paul had a full evening picking up his Gonzales crew for RCIA and then bringing them home again.

Tuesday — try to get back into the swing of school with my pack of numbskulls, including Megan who completely forgot a gigantic Aquinas reading assignment for her Great Books class and had to spend the entire day reading Aquinas to finish it before Wednesday.  (I did not envy her that task.)  Paul had his usual St. Vincent de Paul  in the evening, and Geneva accompanied him as usual.  When they go to help out, Paul is an interviewer, talking to clients, ascertaining their needs, and praying with them.  Geneva helps by loading boxes of food in the back with another elderly Vincentian gentleman.

Wednesday — Megan had her online class, so I brought Jacob and Geneva along with me to do some car-school when I took Mother for her appointment with Dr. Brink.  Jacob got to come back and see the proceedings:

Dr. Brink said everything was looking “beautiful!” and took the staples out.  That, predictably, has led to an increase in pain over the successive days.  But things are moving in the right direction healing-wise, so after finishing at the clinic, we bopped over to Hamilton Prosthetics where they fitted mom for a shrinker, which is a tight stocking that will shrink the stump down to the proper size for fitting her with a temporary prosthetic in three or four weeks.  After that, we got home just in time for the kids to grab a quick lunch before heading off to MoezArt for their noon-thirty class, and I got to stay home and work on pictures.  Wednesday night was full of church, as always, with three girls at youth group, Paul and the Gonzales crew at R.E., and Nettie and Laurent at choir.

Thursday — the day of home-staying and school-working and not going anywhere!  One likes to have one or two of those days in a week, if one can, but there are never any guarantees.  We did get some school done first thing, and then around 11 Megan and I headed over to the gym for a little workout.  I had gotten a call from Lisa early asking if she could come over, so I said we would pick her up after the gym.  We stopped on the way home and picked up a loaf of bread, a head of lettuce, and a tomato, to make the chicken salad sandwiches I had planned for lunch.  Turned out nobody wanted lettuce but me, and nobody remembered the tomato, so there was lots of that left.  Then Malinda found out Lisa was over, and SHE wanted to come over too, so Paul picked her up on the way home from work, and then JEFF called while he was driving around, and heard we were having vegetarian harvest chili for supper (one of my delicious but probably unrepeatable concoctions) and decided to drop by, pick up Laurent, and with the money I sent, picked up some chips and queso and shredded cheese and sour cream and one sweet onion.  When they all got back, I whipped up a salad with that head of lettuce and tomato, threw in a can of black olives, and put the chili on the table and the 11 of us crowded around the table and had ourselves a rip roaring party.  I can’t believe everybody loved my chili so much.  Had I known in advance what was going to go in it, I would have done one of those lovely Pioneer Woman-style picture posts.   Alas I can only give you the ingredient list, as best I can remember:

1. Fifteen Bean mix, soaked (about 2 cups of beans before soaking)
2. Organic Brown Short-Grain Rice, soaked (about 2 cups of rice before soaking)
3. Minced dried onion
4. Salt
5. Cumin
6. Garlic Powder
7. X-Hot Red Chili Powder
8. Jamaican Allspice
9. Several Chopped Carrots
10. 16 oz. Lime-Garlic Chunky Salsa (any salsa you like can be used, this is what I had in the fridge)
11. 2 Cans Pumpkin
12. Dash or two of sugar (could use brown, turbinado, molasses, just a little something to mellow the flavor)

Simmer the beans and rice till thoroughly cooked with seasonings and carrots.  Add salsa and pumpkin, simmer until ready to serve.  Makes a fairly large pot of chili – we got two family meals out of this.  And while we were all whooping it up with our tasty chili, Jr. got down to business with the sour cream.

Friday — My anticipation of yesterday’s schedule made it seem far more daunting than it actually turned out to be.

We got up early, Mother, Meg and I, and left the house shortly after 7.  Our first stop was the ATM, where I brainlessly handed Megan a credit card instead of my bank card, and then wondered why it would not release any money from my checking account.  I chalked it up to “the machine must be empty – it is, after all, Friday!” – and we motored onward to our next stop, which was to grab some breakfast at a Circle K.  While there I brainlessly put 4 shots of caramel in mother’s small-sized coffee before realizing that the sign said “1 shot for every 12 oz.” Mother got a very caramelly cup of coffee.  It was when I was reaching into my wallet to grab my bank card that I realized which card I had previously handed to Megan, and gave myself the proverbial forehead slap.

After consuming our fortification, we then drove directly (without getting lost as I have done so many times before) to the MVD.  There was already a mob of people lined up almost to the end of the building outside the door, but the line moved very quickly once the doors were opened, and we were inside in no time.  Our goal of the day was threefold: to get Mother an AZ Identification card, to get her registered to vote, and to acquire an AZ handicapped placard.  In the remarkably short span of 40 minutes we accomplished all of this, and I was quite surprised to find that there was no cost whatsoever.  I wonder if that was a mistake… but there it is, we got out of there scott-free!

Upon leaving the MVD, we drove home to get mother some pain medication as she had only had a half-dose at breakfast time and it was not enough.  Leaving instructions with Geneva about the medication schedule, I then left once again with Megan, and we went to pick up Lisa, then stopped by the Post Office to drop off a letter for mother; then went to pick up Malinda and Jr., then finally went to the community center where Megan and I did our workout while the girls and the baby headed for the Library next door.  When we finished we discovered that the library had been closed so they spent their time walking and talking around a nearby field.  Thankfully the temps have cooled off so it wasn’t as tedious as it might have been a week or two ago.

Everyone was thirsty after that, so we stopped for a beverage.  Then we dropped Megan off at home, I checked on mom and made sure she had her meds, grabbed Jacob and Geneva, left Jr. with Laurent, who stayed home to manage the household, and the rest of us went to Wal-mart.  The primary reason for going there was for Lisa and Malinda to pick up some necessities, and I had only five items on my list, so I can’t fathom how I left the store with a cart and a half of groceries.  But it does happen sometimes… that whole “don’t want to waste a trip” mantra has become ingrained.  One of the items on my list was new shoes for Jacob, who’s been having some trouble with his feet that I attribute to going about sockless in his shoes.  He also needed a bigger size. I don’t know how much bigger those feet are going to get, but they’re bigger than his dad’s already!.

Then on the way home, we had to stop at the Walgreens Pharmacy to pick up some prescriptions for mother.  I was dreading going inside because I’d been walking for two hours already what with my gym time followed by Wal-mart, but Geneva volunteered to take care of business through the back sliding door on the van so I could drive through.  (My driver’s side window has been stuck in the up position for about a year.  Fixing it has not yet reached the top of Paul’s Honey-do list.)

So finally and at last, we got home right around 1:40, just in time to meet Megan as she was coming out the gate to jump in Mrs. Cromer’s car and head off to Surprise to give a presentation to the MoezArt cast there about the MoezArt Junior Board, of which she recently became a member, representing the Glendale cast.

Once we got everything unloaded and mostly in the fridge (I don’t know why, but there is always that stray bag of shredded cheese that gets forgotten by the pantry door, or the yogurt that gets stowed in the freezer instead of the fridge, and I find them both later and shake my head…) it was time to relax, and the afternoon was really quite calm after that (as calm as it can be with Lisa and Malinda running around, putting on makeup and trying on their fancy shoes and whatnot). 🙂

Nonetheless, I was tired out at the end of the day, and turned in at the ridiculous hour of 9pm, only staying up long enough to make sure the boy brushed his teeth.

Today, I must fulfill a promise to the boy to let him assist me with a cooking project.  I have decided we’ll bake bread together.  It’s time I trained a new assistant anyway!