I'm a worrywart, but I have wheat to play with now!

I am trying to get back into the swing of things with writing, and only succeeding somewhat. J has suggested that I try writing plays and dialogues and try to get them published. He thinks it would be good to submit some stuff to the company where he got the play the drama club will be doing in one-act competition this year. I am going to free write and brainstorm and try to come up with ideas for that. I ordered a hundred pounds of hard red wheat from a local store recently, and it has come in, so I am feeling the need to play in the kitchen some. I made some double-sized english muffins this morning, and right now some tomatoes are simmering with peppers, garlic, and onion to become the pizza sauce to make english muffin pizzas. I am also contemplating making some carrot cake muffins and some soft pretzels. I need to be good and not get too wild with all the baking I want to do. I don't want to make more than we can eat before it spoils. Baking does make a good creative outlet for me, though, although not quite as good as writing. I keep thinking about this winter. Everything I have seen and felt makes me believe it is going to be a nasty one in our area. I got particularly good harvests from both the berry brambles and the apple trees. There has been a lot of fog in the morning. My old, arthritic knee has been grousing a lot more than usual without any storms nearby to explain why. So all told, I am suspicious. We have plenty of wood for our wood stove to help us get through the winter as far as our power bill goes. I still wonder and worry, though, since I am a worrywart in general. I guess more than anything else, I need to write more so I can focus all my wondering in a more positive direction - wondering what I will do next with the story line instead of what will happen in a few months that I can't do anything about just yet. I could wonder what story lines and ideas I could come up with based on the idea of a hard winter.

canning apples, and a pig in my yard!

I have not been writing a whole lot in the last little while because the apple trees in my backyard, and the apples they have produced, demand attention. I have been canning apples with all my might. This year, I have mostly been making apple butter and apple cider - it makes more sense to can the stuff we use more frequently. I figured out a quick cheat for making cider. All the recipes I've found online talk about making applesauce and then straining it seventeen billion times! That gets rather tedious. i decided to try making applesauce, then watering it down significantly and boiling it to get the apple flavor all throughout. I then add the sugar and spices and can it. It works pretty well, and it still tastes just as good to me. Everything I have been looking at suggests a nasty winter for our area - both berry brambles and apple trees producing really well, lots of fog in the morning in august, and my old, arthritic knee grousing frequently - more so than usual. So I am imagining myself curled up a lot this winter with a mug of hot apple cider while the wood stove crackles away, giving the house a slight hint of wood smoke aroma. I am being naughty in not keeping up a good writing schedule right now. Part of it is that I have been called in to substitute teach a lot in August. (Strange to be called in that early in the school year!) Part of it also stems from being afraid that I won't be able to keep up the pace and quality of what I have been writing. I am getting too perfectionistic and intimidating myself out of writing. I need to stop it - to slap myself on the wrist and allow myself to write whatever I write, then go back and fix it if it needs fixing, and if it doesn't, enjoy what I have been able to create. It amazes me how many times I have to remind myself not to get so caught up in writing perfectly that I am afraid to write. All I can do is keep on going back to that when I get writer's block. In other random occurrences, I went to take my dog out in the yard to do his business, and found a black pig walking around in the front yard! The postman was coming by at that time, and I asked him if he knew who she belonged to, and he said that she lived down the road. I tried driving down to the house he indicated, but no one answered the door. Since she was hanging around, and i had apple cores from working on canning apples, I gave her some to munch on, and after she finished those, she went on her merry way. That's not something you get to do every day!