There are 48 hours in a weekend. If you count Friday night, there are 55 hours. Kev and I packed about 100 hours worth of work and activity into those 55 hours.
We've got to have another day in our weekend.
Friday night, I had "my ladies" over for a scrapbooking night." They were at the house from 7 until 11. Not bad, but I rushed home at 4 to get ready for their arrival at 7. So, early Friday evening was spent in a frenzy of picking up the basement, sweeping the stairs, the basement floor, cleaning Andy's bathroom, setting up for the ladies, and eat supper. I can't tell you what we had for supper, but I can tell you that Andy vacuumed the basement with a bag that was past full. Kat was busy herself, she had a friend sleep over.
While I was doing this, my much-loved husband was preparing to make venison jerkey. We borrowed a dehydrator--commercial sized, and he'd gotten out 20 to 30 lbs of venison, both burger and steak. Another friend, C, was bringing over his dehydrator and some venison and they were going to mix this up together. So, I had my project, and Kev had his. My ladies left between 10 and 11. C didn't leave until 11:30. The girls didn't go to bed until Midnight. We followed shortly thereafter.
Saturday, we were all up by 8. The girls had to be taken to town to a bake sale, Kev started forming his jerkey strips and getting them into the dehydrators. Andy needed to come to town with me to get some leaves for a biology project. (Hey, we don't have any trees other than cedar trees at our house!) Off to town we go. I drop the girls and the baked goods off, Andy and I run to the college to get leaves, and then to Sonic. There we ordered a Large Dr Pepper, a Large Poweraid Slush and a job application.
Kev calls, "Kim's here ready to make pickles."
"Ok, we'll be right there."
I'd been given 2 bushels of cucumbers. We decided--Kim and I that we'd make pickles. She's never done it, I have, so she wanted to help. We spent the day in the kitchen making Bread and Butter pickles, Sweet Relish, Dill pickles, Hot relish, and we even pickled some eggs for our menfolk. I ran out of quart jars and we ran out of pickles while we were making the dill pickles. But we had the canner going from 10 a.m. until 7 p.m.
While we were in the kitchen canning, Kev was also in the kitchen making jerkey. My kitchen is nice sized, but not big enough for 4-sometimes 5 people to all be working on different projects. Kim and I and B and Andy on the pickle project, and Kev and sometimes Andy and sometimes Bob working on the jerkey. We were in each other's way all day. It was 85 degrees outside, my kitchen was close to 100 degrees.
Did our work end at 7, when the pickles were done? No. We still had to get all our hunting gear together. Sunday was opening day for the archery deer season. We had to go, it was opening day! The temperature forecast was 80 degrees. Sunday morning, the alarm went off at 5. I wasn't ready to get up, but, since it's allergy season, I was awake, sniffling. Up we got, three of us. Kat spent the night at Kim's. Into the pickup, off to town to get Lynn, gas, then on to our hunting spots. As we're tooling down the highway, Kevin tells Lynn not to shoot a deer today. We can't let it hang and would have to process it. Ugh. After smelling raw venison straight for two days, the thought of smelling it again was nauseating. Lynn agreed, because he's helping with corn harvest and would be in the field in the afternoon. My thought, while this was being decided, was "Why the heck are we going hunting if we can't shoot anything?"
We sit in our trees until 9:30. Fine, no big deal. Except my allergies kicked in. I'm in this tree, sneezing. No-deer-gonna-come-my-way, no sir-ree. Kev could have shot a nice buck, Andy shot at a doe (turkey, this is his first day! EVER!) and Lynn could have shot a doe. Me, all I saw was birds and leaves and my Kleenex.
Back to town to drop Lynn off, then off to the store for more ingredients for the summer sausage that still was waiting at home. We picked up Kat, mixed the summer sausage up, I started laundry, Kev got shotguns ready for 4-H that afternoon. Grabbed lunch, sent the "men-folk" off to shoot, did more laundry, cleaned a little, used about 40 Kleenex, baked the summer sausage and jerkey sticks, and then it was time for supper.
We ate out.
After supper, Andy and I went to work on goat hooves. Discovered Winter had tried to rip off her ear and I trimmed a hoof to short. Blood everywhere. I'm holding a wiggly goat--one with horns. Trying to keep my finger on her hoof to stop the blood, yelling at my kids to hurry and get the book, get some water, bring the flour out and to help me hold this goat. After stopping the blood, peroxiding the ear wound and getting the pigs back into their pen (They just wanted to see what was going on!) and washing, Kev and I then had to package his 40 lbs of jerkey and C's 50 lbs of jerkey. We finished around 9.
We were in bed by 9:30, exhausted. We need at least another 24 hours in a weekend.
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