I'm Too Tired To Title

I did it! I got out the pressure canner and renewed my pressure canning license (which means I reread the little booklet on how to pressure can) because every year I sort of forget some of the details like do you put boiling water over the beans and how hot does the water in the canner have to be when you put the jars in and oh, yes, you have to get the canner up to the point where steam is merrily issuing forth from the vent for ten minutes before you put the little jiggly thing on and how much salt goes into a quart of beans? 
One teaspoon, in case you're interested and it can't be table salt due to the anti-caking agents they put in it although I bet you anything a million meemaws have used good old Morton's for eons without anyone dying. Funnily enough, a woman to whom I gave some rattlesnake beans who has just started pressure canning, messaged me on FB as I was writing the sentence about the Meemaws and Morton's salt to ask what sort of salt I used. 
Synchronicity, baby. 

If you look at the picture of the beans I canned today, you may notice that the front jar on the left has a buckled lid. 
Dammit. 
That was my mistake. I used one of the Pur brand lids I bought last year when I couldn't find Ball lids and I know they suck because the same thing happened several times last year. Why I have not thrown them out, I do not know. I definitely will. 

My pressure canner will hold seven quarts at a time and that is exactly what I needed to can each and every bean I had snapped yesterday. That was from one week's worth of picking and let us not forget that I gave nice sized bags of more of them to the Hank, Lily, and Jessie households. 
One week. 
In preparation for today's canning, I needed to locate my jar lifter and my canning funnel, both absolute necessities for me. I found the jar lifter but not the funnel and I can see it in my mind so clearly but I have no idea where I stashed it. I opened the bottom cabinet in my Hoosier cabinet because sometimes I put odd items that I don't know what to do with there and didn't find it. I did, however, find a few bags of dried and withered sweet potatoes which had to be two years old, at least. I'd dug them from the garden and put them in there, planning on using them for soup and so forth and then forgot them. They had all sprouted because sweet potatoes want desperately to make more of themselves but even the sprouts were dry as old witches' fingers. I still worry a little that if I throw them in the compost they will resurrect like zombies and try to walk among us again. 
I also did a little organizing of the pantry, pulling anything canned in the past to the front of the shelves and trying to make some order of my canning jars. Mostly what's in there are pickles and jams, some of them going back to 2023. I don't think I'll be making cucumber pickles this year because every cucumber we've tried from the garden so far has been bitter as sinful regret. Even different varieties! I have no idea why that is. I do have another grow bag with cucumbers in it that I planted from seed so I suppose there is still a sliver of hope. I just looked this situation up and it would appear that my plants are stressed, probably from lack of water. I know I planted too much in both bags and I'm sure that stressed them too. 

Oh well. Live and learn.

I also took the trash to the dump place place today, I did laundry, I tidied and straightened. I ironed. And guess what? I am exhausted. Maybe I pushed it a little too much. But we all do this, don't we? 

Here's another thing I did- I shaved my legs in preparation for my appointment with Dr. Zorn tomorrow. The closest he'll get to my legs is checking my ankles for edema but one must try to maintain some sense of pride. 
I guess. I know he wouldn't really care or judge if I didn't. 
Of course I am anxious but not in the crippling sort of way. I still haven't looked at my lab results but truly- if something had been way out of whack or worrisome, I believe I would have gotten a call. That is what I am choosing to believe, anyway. By this time tomorrow it will be well and truly over. 

In not so great news, the dining room definitely has some sort of dead animal in its vicinity. Probably under the house. This is not an unheard of situation. We can't find a corpse and no one in their right mind would venture under this house just to find a dead animal. It will eventually decompose entirely at which point, it won't smell like a dead animal in the dining room. 

And that's about everything that's going on here. Oh! Mr. Moon got in to see the optometrist at Costco and has ordered two new pairs of glasses. Hurray! They won't be here for a week to ten days but that is just the way it is. I am proud of him for getting that done. He's like that, isn't he? I wish I was. 
But I am not.

One picture today. 
One. How odd is that? 
I'll try to do better tomorrow. 

Love...Ms. Moon