Adventures 1,2, 3, and 4 Oh my!

Not one, not two, but four adventures in one blog post!? Well, this is ground breaking! You’re just going to have to read more and enjoy. 🙂

Adventure #1- The Garden

This is my on-going adventure, and lately adventure is an understatement. The weather up here has gotten freakishly chilly, and most of the viney-plants that I planted earlier last month have all died. I have about two sugar pumpkins, a squash, and a cantaloupe left of six jack-o-lanterns, three sugar-pumpkins, three squash, three watermelon, and three cantaloupe. I have enough seeds, and enough time to re-plant, but right now its a mess. And because of the weather, all the seedlings I have inside perished from lack of sunlight. All there is left to do is persevere and try again! (And I have to tell my mom to stop buying new seeds, because I have no place to put them yet o.o)

Adventure #2- Cooking Dinner for 8

Holy crap! Eight people, and my mom tells me to cook?! I can hardly make Mac&Cheese from the box without help from my younger sisters!

I wake up in the morning as my mom is getting ready to go to work and getting dinner started. She looks at me as she’s putting a couple of frozen lamb-shanks into a large black casserole tin. I look at the daunting mess of dirty dishes in the sink as I remember that I forgot to take care of them last night. But before I could open the dishwasher to clean up the disaster looming over my kitchen counter, my mom says,

“We’re having shepherd’s pie tonight, and I need you to make it,”

In my head I’m screaming my head off. Outside, my sleepy and groggy body manages to let out a “what?”

“Can you cook tonight?” she asks. I look back at the dishes, and back to her and shrug.

“Yeah, I guess,”

As soon as I said those words however, an idea began to surge from my brain into my thought process. I hardly ever cook. The last time I cooked for the family was at least two years ago (as a punishment!). This could be my Adventure.

Apparently, cooking has to do with allot of waiting at first. I had to wait for the lamb to let out all its juices, and for it to get all tender and cooked and all. I left it for too long however, and had to add more water and wait about an hour more. Then I had to pull all the meat off the bone. I’ve done this before when I helped my sister make some chicken soup, and I am so glad that it wasn’t chicken again. Lamb bones are allot bigger, and lot easier to spot, and a whole lot less disturbing to pull apart.

Once I was done with the meat, all I had to do was open a couple cans of peas, cut up some carrots, sauté some onions and mushrooms, and boil some potatoes, and mash some potatoes, and make some gravy, and put it all together, and put it in pie dishes, and have it all done in about two hours. Easy peasy lemon squeezy…right?

Wrong. Oh so terribly wrong. Remember all those delicious juices I waited for? All it took was for my twin to knock into the pan, and for me to watch it all spill over the floor. My dog was happy about that. I had to retrieve all the bones that I threw away (turns out I wasn’t supposed to do that) and boil the living daylight out of them. This was the first time I’ve ever made gravy, so my older sister helped with that. There was no injury cutting carrots, onions, or mushrooms (thank the Cooking Gods). I burned myself somewheres between sauteeing and mixing things together though. I almost over-boiled the potatoes, but remembered in time. Mashing them had to be the easiest part of the ordeal.

Finally I put it all together, and put it in the oven. I was an hour over-due, but that was okay. Dinner was relatively on time-ish, it was edible, and nothing was burnt! Except for my thumb, but we weren’t eating my thumb. Everyone enjoyed it, and the leftovers lasted through another dinner, and a couple lunches. I was really proud of myself for trying something new and challenging, and yes it was rewarding. Would I do it again? Maybe…but you, know, I think something different. Like steamed broccoli- in the microwave. That’ll take what? Five minutes? I like that idea =)

Now about those dishes…I think I would have rather have made dinner all over again then to tackle the mess that grew into a monster while I was busy. I ended up taking care of the disaster the next morning after being scolded. Hey! I made you dinner! xP

Adventure #3 -The Home-front Volunteer Project

Saturday morning, May 1st, was absolutely dreadful. I was tired, my twin sister was cranky, her boyfriend had bailed on volunteering with us, and my parents were mostly grouchy. My own boyfriend, Johnny, had just came back from Texas last week, therefore unable to sign up. So it was just me and Sally that afternoon, which is never terrible because she also happens to be my best friend. We aren’t really twins, but we should have been. She was two years late, but acts two years older. We’ve always had each other, and often came up with our own stories and games (which are now “working novels” which might end up being another adventure!). So when she signed up for the Home-Front project, natrually I went with her.

Finally arriving at around 12, we ate a quick lunch and went straight to work. I started painting inside, and she started raking and tearing up unwanted roots outside. The house we were working on, was for an elderly woman named Grace. She had given so much of her free time to the church and the community, we decided to give back in her old age. And by we, I mean over 100 able bodied young and older adults with hammers and shovels.

It was amazing to see so many people working together for a good cause. I ended up working mostly outside (quite disappointed about this, because I’ve grown up around construction sites my entire life and really would of liked to fix some stairs, or lay down some new tile- but they had way too many people who apparently knew how to do that as well). Me and my sister raked up almost an entire field of dead leaves, weeds, random junk-yard objects, and tons of poison Ivy which I’m still itching from. After most of the yard work was done, we were up again asking what else we could do to help. We got job after job, finishing way too fast for anyone else to think. We moved furniture, cleaned random household items, picked up all the scrap wood on the ground, folded tarps, and moved some two by fours into trucks. While we were doing all of that, there were people painting the outside, painting the inside, cleaning windows, laying tile inside, sweeping, vacuuming, hanging paintings, putting in new cabinets, a new toilet, a couple new windows, replacing a wall by the stairs, and putting the house back together again.

We met a bunch of new people without even meeting them. We all had name-tags, so we called each other by what we read. The adults sought us out to help us find work to do- everyone wanted to help, everyone was tired, and everyone was willing. Whoever wasn’t working on the house that day, had supplied bottled water, soft-drinks, coffee and doughnuts, breakfast and lunch. They made sure everything was cleaned up, and everyone was refreshed and fed.

After a long hard day, we all went to church. Father Sebastian said mass, and gave us volunteers a special blessing (woot woot and what not ^^). Afterwards, we all met up in the church hall to get some dinner. So many people baked casseroles, breads, deserts, and salads. They supplied drinks and coffee, and fruit. Everyone had a hand in something.

Forgive me for repeating, but it was just amazing seeing everyone come together for a great cause, and an awesome way to spend a Saturday. I’m definitely joining next year for another adventure.

Adventure #4- Freezing Shower!

We’ve all had those times, those gaps between oil deliveries, right? No hot water, no heating, and of course, the drastic and sudden drop in temperature! Do not delay your shower. Ever. Even if its midnight and you’re thinking you could take one in the morning- you might not be able to. You might end up freezing your toes off as you suffer from bad hygiene. I repeat, do not delay your shower.

So what does the eternal optimist do with a bad situation? Force yourself to go through with it, and call it an adventure!

It might not have been jumping into the arctic, but I swear it sure was close. I delayed the inevitable, stood up against the tiled wall of my shower and curled my toes away from the icy splashes for at least five minutes. I stared at the rain of terror, right behind it was the lufa. I just needed to rinse, soap up, rinse. I kept repeating in my head,

“Its an adventure, it’s an adventure,”

But even those encouraging words couldn’t move me to get it over with. I held my breath. ‘Just GO!’ I thought. With a jolt I moved my arm…and with another jolt, I took it back. I couldn’t do it. I could wait until tomorrow for my shower, after the oil delivery. This was rediculous, nonsensical, completely and utterly useless and a waste of my time. Now those were motivating words.

My heart jumped as I found my way under an icicle downpour! I held my mouth shut to keep myself from screaming. I grabbed the lufa, and jumped out of the hellish rain. Phase 1 of the war was over.

Do you have any clue how hard it is to get a lather with freezing cold water and a bar of soap? Well its impossible. I didn’t even need the lufa, but I managed to scrub myself clean (itching some of those blasted poison ivy blisters while I was at it). Now…to rinse.

Again, I held my breath to keep myself from screaming, and alerting the entire house of the obvious issue. Finally, the longest 30 seconds of my life past, and I was soap-sud clean. I shut off the water, and laughed.

The best part about holding in screams, is when you get to laugh them out. It was amazing, and absolutely exhilarating. I wasn’t so thrilled about it right then, but right now I wouldn’t mind taking another icy shower. It was a hell of a lot of fun.

~~~Well, I believe appolagies are in order for not getting this done as they happened. But hey, I’m a teenager, I’m lazy. And I’m busy doing things like getting grounded, and not cleaning my room, and making it look like I’m doing homework =P

Naw, I’m kidding. I’ll update my adventures as they come each week. I already have one in mind: “Painting a Masterpiece” again, something for my church. Its due in June for an auction. Imagine having a piece of your art in an auction?! Well, in order to make that dream a reality, I’ve been painting allot. I actually dabbled into water color. I’ve discovered I don’t like water color. I’m sticking to my acrylics for awhile, and hopefully you can see more of Adventure #5 as it progresses.

Hope you had fun reading!

TTFN, Tah Tah For Now ❤

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