The Return of "Can't Boil Water" Woman

I can't believe it. I melted the porcelain off the bottom of my tea kettle AGAIN. It's true. People laugh when I say it, but I can't boil water.

No, actually, I can boil the darn water fine, it's the stopping boiling that trips me up!

When my job went bye-bye, and I became a stay-at-home mom, it was not exactly a dream come true. Yes, I did want to stay home with our son, especially since he was a cuddly two-year-old at the time, and work had become increasingly toxic as more people were laid off.

But at the same time, my husband is the domestic one. I married the Perfect Man (at least for me): he cooks, he vacuums, he washes dishes. What can you say about a husband who actually likes to vacuum? (Aside from the obvious, I mean.)

So there I was, at home, in a house he had kept oh-so-tidy, at least to the extent you can in a household containing two dogs and a kid in the "filling and dumping" stage. (What I want to know is, when does the "filling" part kick in? This is five years later!)

And my threshold for "this place needs picking up" is a lot higher (or is that lower?) than his. I tend to pile things, and when they get to the stage where I can't get at the bottom of the pile, eventually I mostly-tidy the pile away. Repeat either ad infinitum, or ad nauseum, depending on whether you're an Oscar or a Felix.

This did not exactly lead to domestic bliss when he was first getting used to being back to work, and I was getting used to being at home all the time.

Anyway, what was my point? I know I had a point laying around here, but I, ah, seem to have lost it at the bottom of a pile somewhere.

Subject U-Turn

A beautiful November day in SW Outer Nowhere. This is one of three combines that were harvesting the soybean field across the road yesterday. Just in front of the right rear tire of this combine is my telephone cable access box! I watched nervously as the operator carefully maneuvered around the electric pole. What a guy! He completely missed the telephone box. Let's hear some applause! And I volunteer him to give lessons in missing the phone box to the guy who mows the side of the road.

It got clear up to 58 degrees F, and I went out and trimmed mulberry sprouts and dead goldenrod stalks around the garden. I had already seen the first combine go into the field, and I heard what I thought was another combine on the road. When I stood up to look, there was a big matching trailer, and two more combines humming down the road. (They sound a lot like street sweepers.)

Friday's forecast is for rain, and Saturday's is for snow, so as long as they have dry weather, they will harvest, harvest, harvest. They got into this field around 5 pm, and at least one combine was still out there in the dark with its headlights on at 8:30 pm.