Today was finally warm enough along with the roads being dried off, to go and get my filthy car washed. These past weeks of slushy roads have been brutal in dirtying up North Iowa’s cars and trucks. Last week I used up at least a ½ gallon of windshield wiper fluid just to keep the grimy slush that other cars were splatting on my vehicle as they drove past. At least it’s clean now and hopefully will stay that way for a few days.
Most of my day was spent at the office performing necessary monthly accounting. I thought I’d at least get started with sorting out my tax stuff so I could really dig into it every free hour or so, but unfortunately there were statements to balance and bills to pay along with getting requested correspondence out to clients. As I was leaving, I looked back at that large worktable in my conference room and was at least pleased to see I had readied it for some real marathon work to be done.
Nearly everyone has their mode of doing work, but mine is to have work areas free of things that can easily create distractions. Whenever I walk into offices and see piles of files and folders on desks I think, “How is it possible they can concentrate on any given project?” Oh well, there are always those who seem to work better in chaos rather than in more regimented fashion—not! There’s one little quirk I’ve always had, and that’s taking notes, therefore my spindle is filled with bits of information that’s easily accessible when needed. I think many of our young must similarly create little tickler files on their tablets. I’m not so sure I’d like having all my resource information digitalized. There’s always that “what if” should computer files get destroyed.
Since I’d been hungry for sauerkraut these last days, I thought I’d run over to HyVee and see if they still carried the type that’s in jars. I was surprised to find they still had it, but when looking at the price of a jar that wasn’t but 3/4’s of a quart, I began to walk away. I stopped myself and thought, “I’ll go ahead and pay the $8.29 for this jar, but it had better be worth it.” When I got back to my office, I decided to open it and have a taste. Well, it was good, and very much tasted like what my mother used to make nearly every year, but not spectacular considering the price I paid.
This is one more reason why many of us who’ve got the wherewithal to have our own gardens, should consider growing our own vegetables and start experimenting with home canning, freezing, drying, and fermentation. Believe me, if and when you become good at fermentation, your pickles, sauerkraut, and beets will taste just as good or better than what was in that less-than-a-quart jar I just paid $8.29 for today.
I happened to run into one of my relatives on my mother’s side today whom I’d not seen in a while. While talking about family as well as world events, we both came to the conclusion the “tilting at windmills” is growing in popularity. Unfortunately it’s not because of poor vision as in “Don Quixote”, but rather their burning needs to be noticed in all their bad ways.
